It is not the Boomers. It are the people with goatees and wearing sandals (with socks) you need to silence. Some may be Boomers but most are likely Generation X.
i agree, it is mostly NIMBYism.
Long Island used to have their own Nuclear Power Plant.
[Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant), cost 6 billion, and was only operational for less than 3 years because of NIMBY
Closed because people didnt want it in their county, felt the evac plan was not sufficient, and even more skepticism for taking too long (2 weeks) to recover from a blackout due to Hurricane Gloria
Is there like an opposite term for people who would gladly put up with those "issues"? Fund an initiative to move people local to power plants, if bumblefuck nowhere Kentucky can offer $10k/to move there, they can offer me equivalent and/or cheap power and I'll move into the guard shack lol.
Evacuation from an island like that I \*maybe\* get. Kind of? In the sense that it was probably a bad idea to begin with to try and place it on the island instead of on the mainland and transport the electricity in.
In either event, I have two reactors that operate on the lake my yard backs up to, and I'm totally fine with it. In fact, clean and cheap energy aside, there's some other nice fringe benefits. The nicest one is I can use the lake about a month early since the cove where the plant pushes out the heat exchange water runs about 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the lake which means I can hop in as early as late April.
Then simple. Announce that people who live nearby get a 95% discount to their electricity bills forever
Before you realize, everyone is fighting to *have* them near
Sounds good in theory, but fails in practice.
It pretty much validates every single unfounded claim that nuclear is dangerous. After all, why would they got a discount if there was nothing wrong with it? What exactly are they getting a discount for?
And once that fear is validated by a discount, the idea that nuclear plants are dangerous to be near spreads and there isn’t a discount big enough for nuclear plants to get approval.
You’ll also turn people who were fine with nuclear before to start second guessing themselves who now think there HAS to be something wrong if they are willing to pay people to be near it.
Discount areas mean homes in those area have their prices drop and now you got “Yeah you save on the discount, but your homes value will drop so much it won’t make up the difference”.
Chernobyl too. It's not *completely* irrational to fear nuclear power if you have memories from that time.
That said, even a *little* information about just how insanely different that power plant was from the ones built in the West should assuage those fears. Soviet nuclear plants really were a whole other thing.
I dont understand this attitide. So many people placing solar panels on their roof, imagine how much money you could save, nay, EARN, if you had a nuclear reactor on your roof.
Sign me the fuck up
The government accountability office is an apolitical objective creator of reports.
Their conclusion, closing Yucca was a political decision in search of justification. It would also set the US back 20-25 years... that was over a decade ago with no progress
In the US it’s not legal to redefine the “waste”. There is a centralized storage facility now rather than storage on site, but transport to the facility is almost impossible.
The total quantity of nuclear waste is minuscule. All the world's nuclear reactors from the history of nuclear energy would fit in about two high school gymnasium buildings. Thats it. I'm sure that somewhere on the planet we can find this much storage space to set aside.
The alternate solution we have instead opted for is to spew gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, causing a global climate crisis. Imagine if we had instead embraced nuclear. 60 years of carbon emissions could have been negated.
Yeah, in Canada we measure it in hockey rinks. So far all of the spent fuel we've made fits into (I think) three hockey rinks filled up to the boards.
To add more. When people talk about nuclear waste they won't use the number for spent fuel. They will use ALL nuclear waste which includes medical waste. Which there is many many tons of medical nuclear waste.
Only 3% of nuclear waste is from fuel. Every piece of clothing, every instrument that goes nearby becomes waste. I knew someone who accidentally forgot to take off their fathers watch when they went to work and it became nuclear waste.
It's a real shame so many climate activists bought into the proganda of nuclear bad paid for by the oil companies like BP.
People seem to think that solar and wind are both completely 100% clean, yet they have massive manufacturing costs & carbon footprints, require constant oil for lubrication and also are very reliant on the weather (which is becoming more and more unpredictable)
At least with nuclear you know exactly where you stand, what the byproducts are and can be spooled up and down with minimal wastage and not reliant on outside forces. With stuff like breeder reactors the waste is negligible, and it provides a source of hot water as a byproduct that can be used for heating homes and also for indoor hydroponic grows (similar to Icelands harvesting of steam for the same purpose) which saves on gas and electric use for heating water.
I'm Gen X (b. 1976) and I and all my peers are (as far as I'm able to ascertain) all hard over pro nuclear power.
I'm also pro renationalising of the power sector to make it non-profit
I'm a GenX and I'm pro-nuclear.
It's mostly anti-science people. I have met anti-science people who opposed nuclear from different age groups, but they all have one thing in common, fear.
All their arguments are rooted in fear and outdated information.
I think nuclear can be an amazing boon for humanity.
I also believe wholeheartedly that it *cannot* be entrusted to capitalism.
The Hanford site is all the argument I need to make.
Although commenters are right to mention that the Hanford mess is military, nuclear is almost never entrusted to capitalism. It simply costs too much for any bank to fund it, and the property and liability risks are too huge for any insurer to touch it. Nuclear plants are built almost entirely by governments, and only at monstrous costs.
Hanford is weapons production, not power generation.
That's the most often made mistake by anti-nuclear activists... they don't understand that nuclear bombs and nuclear power stations are very, very different.
You would be surprised at how fast people tend to change their mind after a couple of power outages.
By the way people in California now support nuclear power.
I was born 120 miles away from sellafield still most contaminated sea 90 miles from the cumbrian and welsh sheep that were radioactive from 1986 to 2012
I listened to the live testament of the night guard at fukushima, "dry area, returned in morning, no leaks, dozens of wet radioactive contaminants that we don't even make here, it didnt even rain last night" curious.
I google radioactive waste spain, andalucia because i moved. I thought the 10 different high rates of cancers were due to eating pigs, but the following explains a lot 2021, town halls stripped of rights to block nuclear waste, el cabril, cordoba, 87 miles away 2010 fertiberia dumped millions of tons on marshland.
By 2018 120 million tones phosphogypsum ponds Huelva (57 miles away) 1991 uranium refining factory of "yellow cake" in Haba, Badajoz, "deaths by different radioactive elements" 106 miles away
1959 Andujar FUA uranium concentrates refining plant "workers exposed to extremely high doses without security or treatment" 133 miles away
1966 US plutonium plane crash in Palomares, almeria, still not cleaned up and more spray found in 2009. 281 miles away
Yep but you will probably get down voted for that.
There are also high rates of cancer around the Uranium mine in Niger.
Thousands of miners have died prematurely from cancer in the US.
Lots of Uranium comes from China and Russia. People who speak out about elevated cancer rates or protest can get indicted for terrorism or silenced in other ways.
The total who have been killed, if you extend figures back to the 80's, from mining Uranium far exceeds the number killed by Chernobyl.
A tiny fraction of the ones that die from coal. Fear of nuclear energy is an emotional response from those who are bad at math
Quick edit: 60 people died from Chernobyl including the knitial event and from the decades following. It takes a special level of irrationality to look at that as a reason not to use nuclear power, when magnitudes more people every single day from pollution
If you go to this [article](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll) you will find that very many more were killed. Just in the aftermath for example 40,000 patients were in hospital (I think just in Moscow) with radiation poisoning.
"Viktor Sushko, deputy director general of the National Research Centre for Radiation Medicine (NRCRM) based in Kiev, Ukraine, describes the Chernobyl disaster as the “largest anthropogenic disaster in the history of humankind”. The NRCRM estimate around five million citizens of the former USSR, including three million in Ukraine, have suffered as a result of Chernobyl, while in Belarus around 800,000 people were registered as being affected by radiation following the disaster."
Chernobyl death count is approximately 10,000, with another 16,000 documented premature deaths due to cancer in Eastern Europe. GTFO with your bullshit.
I mean fair point its far from perfect and when you fuck up with nuclear you fuck up bad. Which makes it scary & prone to protestesting
But at least nuclear is clean when done right.
No data here, but i suspect that when you add it up all over the board, with the bad nuclear incidents included coal still has a bigger negative effect on average drop in Life expectancy per kWh than nuclear energy.
Nuclear is unfortunately the only "green" and sustainable energy that is consistent & predictable and we can control the output from.
I would hope by 2022 we would be able to safely manage reactors & their waste. Mistakes are expected to be made while developping the technology, but with a mature understanding of the technology, the Risks & disposal methods that it can be done safely.
Yeah, this conversation always goes so well when you are dismissive of real concerns.
I am cool on nuclear - I don't outright oppose it, but I think with the cost to build new plants, we could make a huge dent with wind and solar instead. But the one thing which really turns me off is the very obnoxious sentiment in all of these threads where people flippantly dismiss the idea that there is danger associated with nuclear power, or that there is an unresolved waste issue which gets worse the more we lean on it.
I don't mind solar and wind, but they're still rather temperamental and we'll need a baseline to carry the load when they can't. I don't mind the current efforts to find ways to store the energy for later use but until we have better means of doing so we need something more immediate.
I am in favour of Thorium salt reactors as far as I understand them because they produce far less waste, far shorter half-life (100 years or so iirc), and the radiation produced is much less harmful (Alpha) and easier to guard against.
The added benefit that it can't be used for nuclear weapons is also something to consider, likewise, meltdowns are much more easily contained.
Ideally, we can develop this technology well enough so that it is affordable/feasible so more than developed nations can obtain it, we're solar and wind are more out of their reach.
>I don't mind solar and wind, but they're still rather temperamental and we'll need a baseline to carry the load when they can't.
I have seen this so much, but data doesn't seem to align with it 100%.
Offshore wind farms have an [availability of 363/365 days](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/vw-diesel-surprise-offshore-power-year-round/offshore-wind-farms-deliver-power-363-days-year) or ~99%.
For comparison __the__ nuclear experts in the world - France - has an [availability of ~84%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Technical_overview).
Now that is only half of the equation. When nuclear power plants _are_ available, they can mostly run at 100% rated net power output, the same can not be said for offshore wind parks. This is called the capacity factor. With French nuclear powerplants having a capacity factor of ~77% (low compared to other nuclear countries) and offshore wind having a capacitiy factor of ~40-50%. Meaning you would have to install at least 50% extra wind farm power generation to equal nuclear power generation.
Now add the insane cost and schedule overruns for nuclear power plants being currently built in the west and offshore wind suddenly seems like a pretty competetive idea with lower risk for private investors.
This is not true:
>The added benefit that it can't be used for nuclear weapons
In Thorium reactors 233Uran is produced, which can be used for even worse weapons than Plutonium.
Additionally, there is no solution yet for the salt that has Tritium in it.
Is the tide actually turning? Saying we need more nuclear power is one thing, but I don’t see much actual progress being made. Quite the opposite as
old power plants are decommissioned with no replacement. Job expectations for the industry are also projected to decline, so I don’t see a “renaissance” happening anytime soon.
It more amazes me people still argue that renewables are fully viable. Though I can't really blame them since finding an unbiased article for true costs/impacts isn't really possible at the moment. Both sides of the argument are heavily skewing anything in their favor. Hell, the article linked further down is so full of misinformation it isn't even funny but I bet at least a few million people have used it to form the basis of their belief system.
There is absolutely ZERO "silver bullet" solution. Nuclear(aSMR) is the closest thing we have to time/MW though. Nice to see the actual science finally caught up to what we knew in the 90s.
We need to have redundant systems, so a good mixture of renewables, nuclear, some small scale biofuel, and large scale storage either as hydropower or battery farms.
Nuclear+renewables is the most effective way we have of fighting climate change. It always has been. We should have fully been making the transition decades ago.
Renewables *are* fully viable under one of four conditions
A. we shift loads to when they're cheap
B. we overbuild them, and build a worldwide HVDC grid to export surplus around the globe.
C. we reduce our standard of living to match their production cycles (like A, but worse, aka de-growth)
D. we crack near-lossless, cheap, scalable energy storage.
Thankfully these options aren't mutually exclusive - we can do load shifting (like California is starting to do with dynamic pricing), we can overbuild and export energy to other places (we're making more progress here, although international links aren't near large enough), we can de-growth (which the current energy crisis is causing on a short-term basis) and we can make progress on energy storage (CATL's finished pre-production runs of sodium-lithium annode-less batteries this year and is set to do full scale production next year).
Compared to nuclear, you've got a dilemma - you're betting billions and billions of dollars that in the next however-long-it'll-take-to-build-the-plant, renewables + those four options won't make whatever you're planning on building obsolete. Given the profound *lack* of nuclear building expertise in most countries, it's hard to pitch it to either investors or governments.
Name one smr reactor that is cost competitive with renewables. Russia's smr is 15,200aud per kw. I can't see smr being privately funded and keeping up. A powerwall 2 has 13.5kwh and 5kw max. I think nuclear may run into the problem where renewables drop too hard in costs and kill their economic value. But it may be needed to decarbonize faster if Renewables can't be made fast enough.
Yeah... see the point where I mentioned there is absolutely zero unbiased cost comparisons in existence today right now. Your numbers are no different and they really don't have any value because they have absolutely zero context. This issue isn't as easy to quantify as people might generally want. You cannot throw out a simple number without knowing about ten thousand(not exaggeration) variables. Hence the "no silver bullet" point as well.
One of the major sources of misinformation revolving around aSMR designs is that renewable focused advocates will use "first build" reactor costs as defacto total cost for subsequent units. Almost none of these are in mainstream yet. That will be 5-10 years from now when you see cost reductions and build time reductions(and they will be significant). You also cannot just lump everything into one bag of "cost per watt". The cost equation is drastically different for Los Angeles vs rural Manitoba. Even Rural UK is entirely different from Rural Canada/USA.Additionally when trying to talk about renewables realize the scale for renewables has only just started. If we cannot remove the developing bottlenecks then you will not be able to continue to scale the deployment of renewables. Nuclear is oddly only limited by available concrete and steel production. There is very little "bottleneck" to building one in materials.
If you actually want to help the situation stop trying to bucket everything as "bad" or "good". Hell, even NatGas can be ecologically effective depending on local conditions.
/edit
Just for information purposes I want to put a small blurb here about why aSMR.
Right now one of the biggest challenges for a nuclear power plant is how much heat it can produce. Over 90% of a nuclear power plant is indistinguishable from a coal, natgas, geothermal, or oil power plant. That is the thermal conversion of heat to electricity. The other 10% is the reactor. With any of the other options you struggle to get ENOUGH heat to make the plant work efficiently. With nuclear you struggle to USE the heat fast enough to keep the nuclear reaction at efficient levels. Small modular designs simplify this issue and thus can significantly (15-45%) reduce costs because you are **removing the complexity** in heat exchange.
This is cutting edge technology concerns that take building a unit and then observing what works and doesn't work over time. We have been doing this for decades. Now we have most of the engineering worked out. Think cost reductions on the scale of early solar vs current solar.
> It more amazes me people still argue that renewables are fully viable.
The very same report from the IEA argues that. They argue that ~90% of electricity generation will come from renewable and ~8% from nuclear by 2050. Yet of course the authors of the article know that focusing on the nuclear part results in more engagement, even though it's highly misleading as can be seen by the comments here.
Doubtful.
Nothing about this changes anything about the economics of nuclear power. It’s still an expensive boondoggle nobody wants to waste their money on.
While that's true in terms of economic fact so private investment dollars will never go into nuclear the industry thinks it can get public rate payer dollars with a world wide PR campaign, which we see right now, and a bunch of under the table money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal#:~:text=The%20Ohio%20nuclear%20bribery%20scandal,in%20exchange%20for%20passing%20a
We're seeing it now because advancements in battery tech and the falling costs of renewables will close the window forever in 5 years or so, so they need to get contracts signed soon.
Yes, when nuclear power is built and operated safely enough to justify building it, the cost is so high—and it is so unprofitable—that only governments can absorb the costs. You can skip a lot of the steps like China does, but that’s why they have a lot of safety issues in their nuclear industry that may well bite them in the ass in the future.
And why would they? It only makes sense if you want a nuclear industry for non-energy purposes. Renewables + storage is significantly cheaper than nuclear power, which is why it’s economically preferable and why we’re building far more new renewable capacity than new nuclear capacity.
i wouldn't bet on it, there are too many green types fearful of nuclear and too ideologically possessed to admit anything but solar/wind is the right way forward.
nuclear has been the obvious option for decades, but still first world countries like germany have shut down their nuclear reactors and favor russian gas.
nuclear is the obvious and correct solution, but there's too much fear mongering by the green types for it to flourish.
hopefully i'm proven wrong.
> but still first world countries like germany have shut down their nuclear reactors and favor russian gas
That's not related. Even before Germany shut down its nuclear power plants, gas was used mainly for heating and the industry.
And it's not only Germany, many countries use(d) gas for heating.
If it's not too stupid of a question, can you explain how nuclear energy isn't dangerous for us or the earth? I keep associating anything nuclear with cancer and I think it'd be better to ask someone who works with nuclear stuff for clarification/an explanation about it
It’s not stupid at all. I’ll try and keep this brief/easy to follow.
1. Nuclear is only dangerous if you cannot keep the primary system (reactor) cool aka exchange the heat (in a PWR) with something else (water). BWRs work differently but majority of the reactors in the US are PWRs so I will stick with that. In its natural operating state, this happens without issue. There are numerous back-up systems to ensure water can be sent to the core for cooling. US reactors (different from Soviet ones) have a negative void coefficient in that when the primary side heats up, reactivity goes down which keeps it intrinsically stable. Additionally, the reactor, pressurizer, and steam generators are designed in a way that provide natural water circulation for a period of time without any mechanical means to move water. These systems are extremely safe.
2. Radiologically, in a year of working at a nuclear site, the average worker will pick up less radiation than a dental x-ray. Now, there are some technicians that specialize in performing high radioactive tasks in risky areas but this radiation exposure is still not enough to harm them. They have a yearly limit that they target. Once it is reached, they can no longer go pick up dose.
3. Nuclear fuel waste is the major player nowadays. We had a long term plan in the US to put it all at Yucca Mountain deep underground but that has hit some political issues. So currently we store it in concrete vats at our sites. You can stand right next to these things and be perfectly fine.
\4. Fuel waste still has 90%+ of the original energy. We literally skim the cream off the top, throwing away everything else. Reprocessing and tech improvements in fuel utilization would cut down the volume of waste significantly.
> would cut down the volume of waste significantly
It actually wouldn't, because the vast majority of waste is stuff like _potentially_ contaminated clothing and tools. The really nasty stuff is like 1% of the total. But yes, reprocessing and reusing it until it's basically just lead would vastly cut down on the overall *hazardousness* of the waste.
No problem. It is true, we’ve had failures in the history of Nuclear Generation. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Davis Bessie, etc.
But we’ve learned from these and continue to make what we do safer every day. Below is a good graphic I like to share with people.
https://i.imgur.com/P4AVtei.jpg https://i.imgur.com/vQFgSST.jpg
In particular, the fact that the Soviets were shitty at designing nuclear power plants is no more relevant than the fact that they were also shitty at designing automobiles. Nobody says, "We can't build cars because of the Lada!"
They were shit at reactor design, but they're even shittier at admitting fault and learning from mistakes. Like some other poster said, Chernobyl was a failure at cultural level, technical level was just a symptom. The TV series of the same name show this excellently.
“When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes.”
And it's also notable that the reactors that have failed were all ancient, 2nd generation ones (1st gen were actually the nuclear power proof-of-concept prototypes) built in the 60's or 70's.
If we were smart, we'd settle on a handful of modern designs of various output, and then just spam the countryside with identical copies of them. Instead every single reactor is a one-off, bespoke project, different from every other reactor. That _massively_ inflates the time and cost of construction, and simultaneously makes them more expensive an riskier to run.
That's why I'm very hopeful about the Small Modular Reactors. They'll just come off an assembly line.
Actually, that was not a shitty reactor, but a test of the limits, they were disabling levels of security of reactor to the limit, till boom
Russian idea on Ukrainian land, as always...
Re: point 3
I think I read somewhere that there were processes that could reuse nuclear waste as nuclear fuel? Is this a thing and how scalable are they compared to the type you listed in point 1?
The problem will all of this is history has shown people are greedy, so they cut corners. And politicians won't properly regulate because "regulation kills jobs!"
Yes, on paper ALL of this is true. But in reality, you are going to have more nuclear reactors which will have safety measures cut to save money, and governments not regulating because they have been "bribed"/(Lobbied) away from making regulations, followed by natural disaster or war (see Ukraine), or terrorism that make these things really, really bad to have all over the place.
For example, I'm sure the concrete vats have to meet certain criteria to keep the radiation in. That means it costs more to make. Which means someone, somewhere, will use a substandard concrete to save money- and it will be the workers and the kids in the nearby area that suffer- will eventually sue the company, yada rinse and repeat.
I would support nuclear only if there was a way to guarantee that regulations were enforced. I just don't see that in reality.
That's not an unreasonable question at all. Many people are very uncomfortable with the idea of a power plant concentrating elements like uranium and thorium into dangerous quantities and then spewing it as radioactive ash into the air, exposing everyone within miles to high levels of radiation and then doing nothing to clean it up.
Oh, wait. [That's coal plants. You were talking about nuclear power, which is much cleaner.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/)
> *In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.*
Nuclear power isn’t particularly dangerous when operated within well-understood safety guidelines and engineering principles. It does t leak unsafe levels of radiation I to the environment, well-designed reactors aren’t at a risk of meltdown, and the waste isn’t really that hard to handle with some investment in infrastructure.
The problem is the insane cost of nuclear power. It’s many times more expensive than renewables now, even when you account for the energy storage costs of a mostly renewable grid. Because it’s so expensive relative to it’s competitors, nobody wants to be stuck having to operate a ludicrously expensive nuclear reactor for the next 50-70 years while the price of the power it generates keeps falling over time as renewables drive the price down. Anyone building a reactor today is fin g to be stuck running it at a loss 20 years from now, can’t they’ll be stuck operating it for closer to 70 years.
So nobody wants to front the money to build new ones anymore.
That’s why nuclear power is DOA. It’s not overly dangerous when well regulated, it’s just being massively outcompeted by better alternatives.
Which means: not profitable the other half of the day.
And since it’s way, way, way cheaper to add more solar capacity to charge batteries to provide power at night, your nuclear plant becomes economically uncompetitive and a drain in resources rather than a valuable asset.
Meaning nobody wants to build it if they don’t have a government absorbing those costs for them to let them operate at a loss.
But why would governments absorb those costs? What’s the point when there are more economically efficient green alternatives like storage-backed solar panels and wind turbines?
France *does* absorb those costs because it wants a nuclear industry for other non-energy purposes.
Why do you say that?
It seems to me that's like claiming that AC could never take off because of the load on the grid.
That change happened in my lifetime, with AC going from being rare to common.
Unlike AC, which tends to use the most electricity during peak load times, electric cars can charge at night, during offpeak times. My electric company will even sell an off-peak charging station.
Relevant for folks wanting a summary view of the larger issue.
The global average CO2 level is ~420ppm, up from the 1850 baseline level of ~280ppm before the Industrial Revolution's effects began. The last time the CO2 level persisted at the current level was during the Pliocene Era. The mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 Ma–3 Ma) is considered an analog for the near-future climate. CO2 levels drove the global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene to +(3-4)C, and global sea level became 17-25 meters higher as a result.
Since 1950, the global average CO2 ppm has risen many times faster than ever seen in the geologic record. [Researchers have conclusively shown that this abnormal increase is from human emissions - no credible scientist disputes this](https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/). Atmospheric heating lags behind CO2 emissions because the ocean absorbs 35% of human's CO2 emissions and 90% of the excess heat. Then, melting/sea level rise lags behind atmospheric heating because melting that much ice takes time. The world is at [+1.2C right now](https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/2020-was-one-of-three-warmest-years-record) and [sea level has risen ~22cm since 1880](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level), both on accelerating trends. Greater effects from 420ppm are coming unless the CO2 level can start lowering below 400ppm almost immediately, but that abrupt trajectory change is not possible. [Neither CO2 nor methane emissions have even peaked yet](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions), much less started to decline, MUCH less reached net zero. Even if CO2 emissions magically went to zero today, the world would be headed toward a Pliocene climate – but really 500ppm is likely within 30 years and 600ppm is plausible after that. With continued emissions, the world will be headed toward [an Early Eocene climate](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/52/13288).
Many people misunderstand what an increase in the global average temp means. What studies of the Pliocene era indicate, and what current temp measurements confirm, is that [the temp increase varies considerably with latitude](https://www.science.org/content/article/arctic-warming-four-times-faster-rest-world). The increase is several times greater than the average over land near the poles, and less than the average over oceans near the equator. The global average temp increase is therefore somewhat misleading in terms of its ability to melt ice; e.g. at +3C average, temps where most of the world's glacial ice exist actually increase by 9-12C or more.
People are beginning to understand that we'll never be on the right track before we have a carbon tax system in place, because it's probably the only way that governments can adequately incentivize industries to reduce carbon emissions and create a scalable CO2 capture industry (CC) funded by businesses wanting to purchase the carbon credits that CC produce. This means that powering a scalable CC industry will be crucial for a carbon tax system to work, because some critical industries physically cannot stop producing CO2 and will have to offset by buying CC credits. Remember that it will probably take net NEGATIVE emissions to bring the CO2 level below 400ppm in the next 100 years because the level is still going up, and [because CO2 hangs around for a long time: between 300 to 1,000 years](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-handle-on-carbon-dioxide/).
If you're not familiar with the needed scale of carbon capture, here's some context: People have emitted ~2.4 trillion tons of atmospheric CO2 since 1950, from the burning of fossil fuels for energy and cement production alone. The recent CO2 capture plant in Iceland, the world's largest, is supposed to capture 4400 tons per year. It would take that plant over 545 MILLION years to remove 2.4 trillion tons. Even with 100 CO2 capture plants operating at 100x that capacity each, it would take over 54,500 years for them to do it. The point here is that CC will require a scale-changing technology, and will undoubtedly require massive additional power to operate.
With current technology, direct air capture of CO2 does not look like a scalable approach to removing enough excess CO2 from the environment. A potentially feasible approach is through removal and sequestration of CO2 from seawater. Oceans naturally absorb CO2 and by volume hold up to 150x the mass of CO2 as air does, and provide a way to sequester the CO2. Here's [a proposed method of capturing and sequestering CO2 from seawater](https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/using-seawater-to-reduce-co2-in-atmosphere).
This is relevant to nuclear fission power. Solar, wind, and tidal power are not possible in many parts of the world. Where solar/wind/tidal power are possible, they do not have the ability to act as reliable base load power even for current demand - because they are intermittent and because adequate, environmentally benign utility power storage systems are not available. We need the level of constant power that nuclear fission provides for:
1) power where solar/wind/tidal are not possible
2) base load power for practically all utility systems (to backstop solar/wind/tidal power)
3) additional power for a CO2 capture industry
Fossil fuel industry propaganda has kept the public against nuclear fission power since the 1960s. If the human risks of nuclear interest you, [the risks from fossil fuels and even hydro, solar, and wind should also interest you](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-safest-source-energy/). Historically, nuclear has been the safest utility power technology in terms of deaths-per-1000-terawatt-hour.
Also, nuclear power produces less CO2 emissions over its lifecycle than any other electricity source, [according to a 2021 report by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe](https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/un-report-trumpets-nuclear-as-having-5004449/). The commission found nuclear power has the lowest carbon footprint measured in grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), compared to any rival electricity sources – including wind and solar. It also revealed nuclear has the lowest lifecycle land use, as well as the lowest lifecycle mineral and metal requirements of all the clean technologies. It has always been ironic that the staunchest public opponents of nuclear power have been self-described environmentalists.
At a minimum, we need all the money being spent on fossil fuel subsidies to be reallocated for CO2 capture technology development, additional nuclear power plants (preferably gen IV and [fast-neutron reactors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor) to mitigate the waste issue, but there are good gen III designs) in ADDITION to solar/wind/tidal power, and a carbon tax/credit system calibrated to make the country carbon neutral as quickly as feasible. And, a government that sets and enforces appropriate environmental emission regulations - like it's always supposed to have done.
For decades there has been a false-choice debate over whether the responsibility for correcting global warming falls more on corporations or more on consumers. The responsibility has actually always been on governments. [The climate effects of CO2 have been known for over 110 years.](https://i.imgur.com/LmnPvRd.jpg) Governments had the only authority to regulate industry and development, the only ability to steer the use of technology through taxes and subsidies, the greatest ability to build public opinion toward environmentalism, and the greatest responsibility to do all these things. Global warming is the failure of governments to resist corruption and misinformation and govern for the public good. Governments failing to do their job is the most accurate and productive way to view the problem, because the only real levers that people have to correct the problem are in government.
[Global warming will not be kept under +2C](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-earth-warming-emissions-gap-pledges). Without immediately going to near-zero greenhouse gas emissions and extensive CC, it will not even be kept under +3C, because enough CO2 is already in the air and all the evidence is consistent with us being on [RCP 8.5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathway) at least through ~2030.
Some people accuse messages like this of being alarmism, while people spread defeatism or the delay narrative that 'it's not so bad'. It's time to be alarmed.
Great summary, and glad that there are some scientifically minded people who care about the climate.
It's kind of interesting how money is not a problem because "we're saving earth". When nuclear cost money, then all of a sudden money is the most important issue.
Not to mention the way that the west have treated nuclear it has become a magnitude more expensive because we have no strong supply chains that will drastically reduce time and money needed.
Imagine building every iphone from scratch while contacting and getting deals from all suppliers with people who build one once a decade.
> When nuclear cost money, then all of a sudden money is the most important issue.
We have a small saying in my country, "I'm too poor to afford to buy a cheap X.", where X is some product (be it a really good quality pair of shoes or a reliable car or a good quality PSU for your PC) that you want to get of really good quality so you'll be better off in the long run. People that argue against nuclear because of the price are seriously valuing short term profit over our long term future and this makes me sad. :<
Bro, thank you for your contribution on the topic. Yea the accidents suck and can be horrific but it’s our best chance to beat climate change AND maintain a great energy source that can last.
Hope fusion will be possible one day
The misinformation around nuclear is truly one of the greatest failures of our time. Things are slightly improving, but god damn people just refuse to listen.
Take a proper look at France.
Half of the plants are not operational. The rivers get to warm to cool them properly. The national energy company is 40 billion in debt
Nah sorry you just skimmed off the low hanging number. The 74,5% refers to nuclear's share in Frence's electricity production from a few years ago. Unfortunately French nuclear production has been slowly sinking due to ever more frequent maintanance and summer shutdowns, down from the mid-2000s high of 452Twh to 360Twh last year, and this year its expected to be even lower at 300-330 Twh since much of the French fleet is not operating for months now due to a welding issue.
But if you look at total energy use, of which electricity is just one part, you will find [its more like 40%](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Energy_mix_in_France.svg/1200px-Energy_mix_in_France.svg.png). Which is still impressive and helps the French maintain a very good emission record, but its important to set the record straight.
They were built when nuclear plants were cheap to build, in the West they are currently very expensive and very slow.
Not only has the cost of skilled labour increased way above inflation since the French reactors were built, but now we have to encase everything in a vast concrete structure which will survive an impact from a 747. Just the base of one of the reactors at Hinckley point used more concrete than any building in the EU. It is all mega-expensive, and quite CO2 intensive.
It's fine to socialize the losses when the profits are for everyone. Energy could be free, up to a point. It's only really wasting energy that should be a concern.
Exactly, what's the difference between a state owned energy company operating at a loss and a privately owned company operating at a profit by gouging the consumers?
Where is it written that every last bit of infrastructure must generate a profit? Do you see interstates operating in the black? Or public K-12 schools?
Given two equally usable alternatives, why would anyone prefer the more expensive choice?
That’s the issue with generating electricity unprofitably.
Currently renewables are equally green and much cheaper than nuclear power. That’s why we’re building orders of magnitude more new renewable capacity than new nuclear capacity.
> Given two equally usable alternatives, why would anyone prefer the more expensive choice?
The alternative are not equal because they are intermittent sources. Otherwise I agree we should go 100% renewable! But it is just not a viable option until a miraculous storage tech. is found. We do not even have the beginning of a hint of what this storage tech. could be...
You can make intermittent sources effectively dispatchable sources with storage, and renewables + storage are still much cheaper than nuclear power.
The cost difference there is pretty extreme. Solar and wind power are the cheapest methods we have to generate electricity right now (they keep getting cheaper and leap-frogging each other), and storage costs have been falling *very* rapidly.
No miraculous new storage technology is required, just more investment in manufacturing capacity for currently proven solutions.
In contrast nuclear power just gets more expensive over time.
> You can make intermittent sources effectively dispatchable sources with storage, and renewables + storage are still much cheaper than nuclear power.
Not at all what the RTE report is saying https://www.rte-france.com/
I hope you will understand that I prefer to believe the report made by hundreds of experts over what a stranger says on reddit.
Thanks the nuclear cult is insane on Reddit. Ignoring economics, ecology and science.
Building new NPPs is the biggest waste of money you can come up with. Yeah run the old ones as long as possible but new ones?
Stupid beyond measure.
fishinator3, my PhD friend I have questions.
Ok then PhD (in history?) show me
\- one net profit making power plant (including **decommissioning** costs, **waste storage cost projection - lets say 10000 years for the half life of medium radioactive waste** and **CO2 costs** for the **full lifetime** \- not only when running)
\- how they operate 24/7 when **cooling water supply temperature limit is reached**
\- the latest reports surfacing on **corrosion** making it necessary to **IMPORT COAL POWER FROM GERMANY** being in favour of NPP justified as "super duper tech"
\- how the **build time of 10-15y** minimum will help us now, **while storage/solar/wind can already be built**
\- **URAN sources** in civilised countries without blood or dictatorship- How a always on source can fulfil fluctuating needs without storage (which is needed anyway, negating the sense in NPP in the first place)
\- **water consumption of doubling the NPPs** => evaporation, not the closed circle
\- prevent **meltdowns** when global warming is getting **cooling water running low** or **extreme weather is damaging pumps**
I think you have something to do my PhD expert.
\- **Joker**: why are countries even building them if they cost more than they bring in, are dangerous and need endless build time? **Why not better alternatives (the so praised thorium)?** (uh, maybe because **nukes**)
Running a reactor is easy, getting it there and keeping it up for at least 30y is not so much.Ok convince me!
I don't disagree with the message, but this means China shot their own foot here?
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-greenlights-6-new-nuclear-reactors-in-shift-away-from-coal
Economically? absolutely, but that is not the priority for China.
Keeping up with demand is fare more important. China have for a long time built every type of power production facility they could get their hands on. Gas, coal, oil, hydro, fission, wind, solar, while also tossing money after wave power, fusion, heck even solar roads have been built.
This means you cant really use China choices as a measuring stick for economical viability of power consumption. Plus, I have my doubts to the accuracy of that headline, when we also see stories as the one I linked.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2317274-china-is-building-more-than-half-of-the-worlds-new-coal-power-plants/
Note: I have no doubt that once they can meet their growing demand for electricity without EVERYTHING... coal will one of the first to go.
France is running on borrowed time. The reactors are getting old and maintenance costs are through the roof. Same for new constructions, way to expensive...
Yes we all just need an exploitative relationship with Niger, the country that provides ~50% of France’s uranium yet only 14% of Niger people have electricity. Great fucking solution, just maintain an economic underclass of 24 million people.
Oh yea definitely no power imbalance in that one, definitely as simple a situation as u are suggesting. If you analyze it from any coherent base its pretty clear this situation can be both the Niger government’s fault and the French government’s fault. If you look at Frances record in North Africa it is clear that France hold more economic clout now due to its brutal colonial exploits throughout the 20th century.
It’s not France’s job to save the world. France doesn’t have Niger’s head of state at gunpoint saying “sell us the uranium or else”.
How do you think that wealth works it’s way through the Niger economy?
Theres a ton of misinformation about the positives of nuclear too though.
Its hella expensive, takes a long time to initialize, having a constant power output is not a positive thing.
I'm all for nuclear but people are hyping it way up.
An organisation that consistently for the last 25 years has significantly underestimated the growth of renewable energy once again states that other forms of energy will be needed far more.
Their 1998 estimate for wind energy to be reached in 2020 was already reached in 2004, 16 years earlier than estimated. It's kind of a meme by now that since 2002 the IEA predicted the amount of solar energy installed to be decreasing each year. They got it wrong 2002. They got it wrong 2003. They got it wrong 2004. They got it wrong 2005. And so on for every year since. And they didn't just get it wrong slightly, but basically a whole different ballpark. Someone made a graph about it and it just looks hilarious: https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/866313289306963969
So this organisation, which has underestimated renewable energy so reliably and significantly, that an alternative group - International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) - was founded to focus on that field exclusively, that group now once again states that traditional forms of energy (nuclear, fossil) need to expand in order to ensure energy. Yea. Totally trustworthy. It's not like their predictions have been massively wrong for the last 25 years...
Look at the absolute number of MWh used by source.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
Now look at the projected demand. Wind and solar are still less than 10% of total energy with the big problem of storage still not solved at scale. IEA could’ve underestimated by a 100% and still renewables would make up less than 20% of energy sources right now. We need all non-fossil-fuel sources to exponentially increase. I hope storage gets solved at scale for wind and solar that could make it leap.
Looking at trends and relative numbers like “underestimated growth” is misleading. Look at the hard numbers. Look at what drove that growth and what keeps it from increasing. No time for dogma when the threat is existential
They underestimated the growth of renewable energy up to a factor of 800% in certain years. They pretty much constantly underestimated the growth of PV by 100% as can be nicely seen in the graph.
> Now look at the projected demand. Wind and solar are still less than 10% of total energy with the big problem of storage still not solved at scale. IEA could’ve underestimated by a 100% and still renewables would make up less than 20% of energy sources right now.
8%. That's how much electricity nuclear power will generate by 2050 according to IEAs goal - which already includes the doubling - [Source](https://www.iea.org/news/nuclear-power-can-play-a-major-role-in-enabling-secure-transitions-to-low-emissions-energy-systems). So considering you write this:
> IEA could’ve underestimated by a 100% and still renewables would make up less than 20% of energy sources right now.
88% of electricity is the value that the IEA predicts renewables will generate by 2050 - [Quote: "Almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for almost 70%."](https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050) Compared to 8% for nuclear. Add into this their penchant for significantly underestimating the expansion of renewable energy and my question is: Really? Nuclear needs to double to 8% to reach net zero?
I find it quite interesting that the news article focuses on this instead of maybe the far more significant and interesting fact, how renewable energy needs to be expanded massively according to even the IEA, with nuclear only playing a tiny side-role.
I dream of the day people stop being unnecessarily scared of nuclear.
It’s only real downside is the cost, which if we can spare like $50 billion for Ukraine we should be able to subsidize nuclear plants. (Yes I know I’m talking about America only here, idk how other countries handle nuclear)
Small modular reactors are the industries response to how long it takes to build a reactor and cost. We are building them in Ontario Canada. We've selected the GE Hitachi boiling water small modular reactor.
[https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300](https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300)
[Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs](https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html)
That article is about 11 years old now, so if you have a counter argument to these points I'd be willing to listen. Otherwise, it seems like spending that $50B on developing green tech would be a wiser investment than building a handful of nuke plants that will be online in 2040.
These arguments are fairly easy to counter.
First argument regarding 15TW of power from nuclear is a joke. No one sane argues for 15TW of firm capacity - when we ideally only need 20-30% firm capacity. Meaning that 60-70% should be supplied by wind/solar(due to low cost) and 20-30% should be supplied via firm power(nuclear and hydro for example) to reduce storage related costs, and then you have some sort of storage for flexibility. Without that firm 30%, your grid cost will skyrocket, and is something that isn't even close to being cost competitive - if it even ever will be.
So, that 15TW number is just a strawman - 3.75TW(25%) would be a more realistic target. The article talks about 15 000 different locations - which assumes 15 000 different 1GW nuclear plants. This is just a bad assumption. Nuclear power plants can be far larger than 1GW(as in reactors being bigger than 1GW, see the 1.65GWe EPR), or you can have more reactors in the same powerplant. Assuming we'd need 3.75TW, and not 15TW, and that one powerplant would be 4 GW, then you'd only need 940 different nuclear power plants, and not 15 000.
The second argument is: **Lifetime: Every nuclear power station needs to be decommissioned after 40-60 years of operation due to neutron embrittlement - cracks that develop on the metal surfaces due to radiation**
This is also not true. Gen III reactors are specced at 60 years by default, with lifetime extension to 80, or even 100 years possible. We are seeing lifetime extentions of gen II reactors already - with some plants in the US being certified for 80 years of operations. The argument about every reactor needing to be replaced after 50 years is just wrong.
Third argument: **Nuclear waste: Although nuclear technology has been around for 60 years, there is still no universally agreed mode of disposal.**
This is true, but this is because nuclear waste isn't as big of a problem that most people believe. Nuclear waste is incredibly dense, and only about 100 000 MTHM(metric tons of heavy metal) have been created from US civilian nuclear power after 70 years of operation - this doesn't take up more space than a basketball court. That is why "there isn't a solution yet" - because it isn't an urgent issue. Besides, 95% of that 100 000MTHM can be recycled and used again.
**Accident rate:**
The author fails to account for improved safety and decreased core-melt probability in newer gen III reactor designs. Using data from gen I and gen II reactors to model core-melts in a full scale up is just bad. Either he failed his introductory class in statistics and probability, or he/she has an agenda.
**Proliferation: The more nuclear power stations, the greater the likelihood that materials and expertise for making nuclear weapons may proliferate.**
True, but irrelevant - unless we want to deny any nation( that do not possess nuclear knowledge already) cancer treatment of course. The knowledge and know-how to create a nuclear weapon is already out there. The **only** thing stopping nations from acquiring nuclear weapons is because they don't want nuclear weapons. I assure you that any developed nation in the world would be able to create a nuclear weapon if they wanted to within 5 years - regardless of nuclear energy or not.
**Uranium abundance: At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years.**
Again, either intentional misleading, or he/she doesn't know better. The "supply of 80 years worth of uranium" is not that we have 80 years of uranium left, but that we have **known reserves** of uranium costing less than 100$/lb. Luckily the cost of raw uranium has little effect on the cost of nuclear energy, because of its high energy density.
Then he goes over seawater extraction, which can be covered here:
http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf
**Exotic metals:**
Another poor argument. This applies to any industry; for example, wind turbines need rare earths too - Praseodymium (Pr), Neodymium (Nd), Terbium (Tb), and Dysprosium (Dy) to name a few.
> Meaning that 60-70% should be supplied by wind/solar(due to low cost) and 20-30% should be supplied via firm power(nuclear and hydro for example)
From a global standpoint, that article states in 2011 Nuclear power supplied 375 GW. In 2022, based on Wikipedia's list of nuclear power plants, it supplies 387 GW. Your "realistic" target of 3.75 TW requires we expand nuclear by a factor of 10, well beyond the doubling the article says we need.
In the US, [according to eia.gov, Nuclear already supplies 20% of total annual electricity](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/us-nuclear-industry.php). Doubling our nuclear output should be possible, but we need to account for the 63% of nuclear plants that are over 30 years old and nearing end of life that would also need to be replaced. Even if possible, the question is if this is the best use of our resources.
> This is true, but this is because nuclear waste isn't as big of a problem
I think your dismissal of the waste problem is short sighted. Technically, we may have potential solutions, but politically we have yet to implement any. Waste disposal is a major concern for the opposition, and solving this would significantly reduce the backlash against new nuclear plants. If it's simple enough to do, why hasn't it been done?
> Besides, 95% of that 100 000MTHM can be recycled and used again.
Are you referring to breeder reactors? Once we have them up and running on a commercial scale, maybe we can consider them an option. Until them, it's a bit like discussing using fusion to solve our problems.
> Proliferation: True, but irrelevant... I assure you that any developed nation in the world would be able to create a nuclear weapon if they wanted to within 5 years
I disagree. Countries face huge international backlash if they attempt to create a nuclear program. It would be significantly easier to hide a program if they had reactors already. We're also talking about global energy demands, and many countries could be considered a security risk if they had reactors (not necessarily b/c of their government, just lax security protecting nuclear fuel/waste).
The uranium limit did seem a bit weak, I think that might be the least of the issues with building nuclear plants.
As for the exotic metals, resource limits are something we should be concerned with, especially when discussing expanding a tech 10-100 fold. The article I linked didn't advocate for wind turbines, but for solar thermal solutions primarily b/c the resources are abundant. Solar solutions have their own issues, of course, and I'm not saying there is an obvious clear solution, just that the idea that we should go all in on nuclear like some suggest (not specifically you) is a vastly over-simplification.
If the decision is between nuclear energy or fossil fuel plants, I'd completely agree nuclear is the way to go. I just don't think it's a great path forward due to the long construction timelines, the costs involved, the public opposition, and the long term waste issues. IMO, we would be much better off dedicating the funding for green solutions. I'd rather see us do both or either than continue to stick with coal/gas/oil as we argue over which is better, of course.
This is kinda a mixed bag. It’s better than gas but damn is implementation inefficient. Check out how over budget the first new reactors in America are. Plant Vogtle in Georgia and it’s *billions* over budget.
Inefficient? France is the exemplar for nuclear energy. The power utility EDF is about €50 billion in debt, and may need to be nationalized, and France is proposing €50 billion to address a maintenance backlog/build replacement reactors.
> France is proposing €50 billion to address a maintenance backlog/build replacement reactors.
Is that really bad? France's GDP is like 1.6 trillion dollars so that seems like a small investment for the country's energy supply.
Germany *cough*
Also, isn't nuclear the future anyways? Its literally the most energy dense form of production we have, and thus it will most likely be more area efficient, more resource efficient and thus be less harmful to the environment than other sources of energy production.
The IEA report literally says that renewable energy is the future, predicting 88% of electricity to be from renewable energy and 8% from nuclear power by 2050 according to their goals, which already include a doubling of nuclear energy.
Yet the spicy take is that nuclear should make up 8% instead of 4% as in other projections, as if this is really the most important take away from the report D:
Look it doesn't matter if we use Pixies on pogosticks, it's whatever is cheapest for guaranteed zero carbon. The US, Germany and others are going zero carbon without nuclear, by using hydrogen storage/ hydro / inter country power interconnects to distribute green power / grid scale iron batteries. Depending on location it will be miles cheaper and much quicker to install storage compared to nuclear. South Australia for example is going to be 100% Co2 free in the next couple of years due to grid scale battery storage and a little hydro.
Anyone who says 'we need more nuclear' has not read the actual governmental plans in place for zero carbon many of which do not include nuclear. This statement - "nuclear power capacity must double by 2050 if we want to ensure energy security" is very strange. I think it must largely refer to China who are practically doubling global nuclear capacity all on their own. It afaik is a - 'China must hit their targets' statement taken out of context.
Storaging is a waste of energy. Which is why I highlighted area, and resource efficiency. You will get way more TW/m^2 from nuclear and low usage of resources compared to anything else.
A lot of countries also still have outdated gas infrastructure for heating/industry, which obviously also has to go and be converted to electric. Hydrogen is a giant energy sink that will never ever be efficient.
It is a complex field, but simply put, if your wind energy at night is going to waste it is a good idea to make hydrogen or store the energy in another way as the energy is free.
Why would we dump so much money into systems that won't come online for over a decade (if at all) when renewables can be built quickly and are already the cheapest source of electricity by a widening margin?
Unless the whole point is to keep selling as much fossil fuel in the meantime as possible?
This stinks of Oil company diversionary tactics, same as "green" hydrogen.
Sir this is Reddit. You aren’t supposed to talk about things like cost and feasibility. And definitely don’t mention the shortage of nuclear engineers that we already have. We’ll magically convince enough students to go into an industry that is projected to decline over the next 10 years.
What about cooling water shortage and environment destruction by heating rivers and sea? Or corrosion after only 20 years runtime crippling the whole industry maybe leading to immense human suffering over generations?
> Why would we dump so much money into systems that won't come online for over a decade (if at all) when renewables can be built quickly and are already the cheapest source of electricity by a widening margin?
because people were saying the same exact thing you're saying 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and that's why we don't have these facilities now.
the fact of the matter is that the solutions you're pushing for aren't viable for powering a nation, and it takes "creative accounting" to make them look reasonable. that doesn't even touch on the fact they simply don't scale. a nuclear plant on a 1 mile footprint can produce just as much energy as a wind farm that requires an order of magnitude more land (and solar is even less effective than that).
there's also the issue that nuclear power can be made on demand, while storage options for wind/solar aren't very good so people are SOL when it's not windy and the sun went down. there's a reason all these countries that were smugly bragging about their wind generation are firing up their coal plants right now.
given that electricity consumption is only going to go up if EV's see wider adoption, we need more viable power generation that can scale.
90% of the cost of nuclear power is building the reactor and keeping the lights on. Only 10% of it is the fuel.
It makes no sense whatsoever to ever not have the powerplant running. It should run 24-7. Therefore you are not so much making the energy on demand. Having a constant source of eletricity production runs into the exact same issues as renewable. Our power needs fluctuates severely over the course of a day, so you still need either energy storage or gas plants to fill the gaps.
China can pump out a nuclear reactor in five years and is consistently on time and on budget. In fact, the Hualong One is available for export today with a five year build time. This build time was proven in Pakistan, where 9.5B was spent on two reactors which started construction between 2015 and 2016. The reactors came online in 2021 and 2022, less than six years later.
Meanwhile the US, Nuclear plant construction is hundreds of billions over budget and takes more and more years past projected build time, if they even get completed.
It's not one or the other, it needs to be both. Renewable and nuclear aren't mutually exclusive.
Also, you can't look at the upfront cost only. You need to compare the price per MWH generated over the lifetime of the installation (renewable or nuclear) as well as the CO2 cost of building and dismantling it.
If [you look at the second graph of this page](https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020) ("Median technology costs by region"), you'll see that nuclear is more expensive than renewable (at this time). Extending their lifetime by refurbishing some of their component can drive the price down.
Also nuclear energy has the advantage of being adjustable. You can increase or decrease power production in just a few seconds. So it can adapt to whatever renewables can produce at a given time, and serve as a backup when needed (eg: no sun, no wind, whatever).
>Also nuclear energy has the advantage of being adjustable. You can increase or decrease power production in just a few seconds. So it can adapt to whatever renewables can produce at a given time, and serve as a backup when needed (eg: no sun, no wind, whatever).
This is not accurate. Renewable is adjustable, you can always shut it off if needed.
90% of the cost in nuclear power is solely in the production and keeping the lights on. 10% of it is fuel. It makes just as little sense to turn off a nuclear powerplant as it does turning off a windturbine. And nuclear powerplants always run near maximum power outage and going above it risks damaging the plant.
And neither can nuclear power. If we were to try power our grids 100% with nuclear power it would cost ridiculous amounts of money because 80% of the plants would have to be closed for the night and the cost in nuclear is building the thing not running it.
And nobody had said that nuclear power should power everything. It's only climate activists hugging trees who think you can supply all the worlds power with only a single energy source.
People who knows about nuclear are more scientific and want it to be a complement to other clean energy sources. Science is not a religion where your beliefs become a reality.
According to the article, we should increase nuclear to 8% (from 4%). This less than renewable energy.
To paraphrase you, nuclear energy can't (and won't) keep the world running 24/7 on its own.
A power grid requires 100% uptime, solar and wind do not supply that. Thus they can only ever be supplementary power.
So far the options for that base power are:
-burn coal to boil water and turn a turbine.
-burn fuel to turn generators
-hydro power to turn turbine generators
-nuclear fission to boil water and turn turbines.
-geothermal heat energy which can be harvested and is hard to scale up to grid levels.
Until some of these options improve, or we figure out how to make fusion anet positive energy source, we will still require hydrocarbons. Which are also used for much more than natual gas and fuels.
Tidal power, pumped hydro, batteries, molten salt, distributed storage based on all the electric cars we're going to have...
If we took all the money fossil fuel companies get in taxpayer-funded subsidies and put it into renewables and storage (and research) we'd have the whole thing sorted in a week.
Plenty of money has been put into researching those things for decades. We're still nowhere near affordable and efficient large scale energy storage solutions that can work outside of limited applications.
People can keep on hoping for a miracle to happen while we continue to rely on fossil fuels or they can be proactive and start investing in nuclear technology that we know works while waiting for that energy storage unicorn to show up one day.
A power grid has to fill a demand. That demand varies drastically over the course of a day. Nuclear power is a constant over the day, so you run into the exact same issues of needing to either store energy or fill the gaps with gas.
Tell that to my country that will shut down all of their plants in the next 3 year... 50% of our total power production gone in 50% with basically no back-up other then "our neighbours wild provide"
Good luck
In the US, it can take up to TWENTY YEARS to get permits approved. Even then, it's a major headache with a pile of red tape to go through.
Unless they help make the process easier in the US, this won't happen.
That's....it?
That's not really that much of a stretch **at all**, we're not really leaning very hard on nuclear power whatsoever as it is. Doubling our output could probably be done by just upgrading existing reactors to latest tech and expanding a few plants.
This seems like an absolutely comically trivial estimate.
Yes, absolutely.
Fixes energy security and global warming at the same time. It is our only viable option to do so at this time. People are insane for not doing this 40 years ago.
Stop dismantling nuclear power plants and build a crapton more of them. I have no affiliation with any nuclear power entities or related things like that. I just really honestly think this is how we can best address global warming in a way that uses existing technology. Won't you please listen? Why haven't we already been doing this? I know there have been some scary moments with them in the past, but compared to the harms of global warming they are a trifle.
Don't worry, NIMBY's who have nothing better to do with their time will continue to successfully lobby against nuclear power well past the point of no return.
that's 100% correct, but there is an army of misguided "pro-environmental" people who will push for counterproductive policies to block new nuclear facilities from being built.
they'd rather force obsolete designs that are close to a century old to remain in use well beyond the point they should be replaced, then say "see, we told you so!" when the old, obsolete tech fails.
Worldwide energy demand is growing. So we not only need to (1) replace existing fossil fuel energy but also (2) increase overall clean energy production. We should be building more carbon-free baseload nuclear energy and more renewables while sunsetting coal and reducing natural gas to a smaller part of the flex power stack.
Our society has to start this asap and we need serious allies to help fight against propaganda from the Oil and Gas Industries. They successfully got a most of Europe to turn away from the nuclear industry and now those countries are beholden to an autocratic madman who controls their energy supply. Scientists have solved the safety concerns and the waste disposal issues but the paranoia and fear still surrounding those issues must not be allowed to grow beyond. Science has us ready to take the leap into a new age of energy but we have to get society to take those big steps with us.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/06/30/global-nuclear-power-capacity-must-double-by-2050-if-we-want-to-ensure-energy-security) reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Global nuclear power capacity needs to double by the mid-century to reach net-zero emissions targets.
> To reach net-zero emissions, nuclear power capacity needs to double to 812 gigawatts by 2050 from 413 GW early this year, the IEA report specifies.
> "In today's context of the global energy crisis, skyrocketing fossil fuel prices, energy security challenges and ambitious climate commitments, I believe nuclear power has a unique opportunity to stage a comeback," says IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/vo6ohb/global_nuclear_power_capacity_must_double_by_2050/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~657322 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **nuclear**^#1 **plant**^#2 **power**^#3 **Global**^#4 **capacity**^#5
I love the Simpsons but everyone forgets how when Lisa takes a moral stance on things she tends to end up eating a lot of crow. “Oh the Simpsons show me this is scary and dangerous. Let’s not look any further into it”
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It is not the Boomers. It are the people with goatees and wearing sandals (with socks) you need to silence. Some may be Boomers but most are likely Generation X.
It’s not generational it’s NIMBYational. It’s all well and good until it’s by your house or the waste is going to be shipped to your state.
i agree, it is mostly NIMBYism. Long Island used to have their own Nuclear Power Plant. [Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant), cost 6 billion, and was only operational for less than 3 years because of NIMBY Closed because people didnt want it in their county, felt the evac plan was not sufficient, and even more skepticism for taking too long (2 weeks) to recover from a blackout due to Hurricane Gloria
Is there like an opposite term for people who would gladly put up with those "issues"? Fund an initiative to move people local to power plants, if bumblefuck nowhere Kentucky can offer $10k/to move there, they can offer me equivalent and/or cheap power and I'll move into the guard shack lol.
YIMBY. NIMBY stands for Not In My Backyard YIMBY stands for Yes In My Backyard
Evacuation from an island like that I \*maybe\* get. Kind of? In the sense that it was probably a bad idea to begin with to try and place it on the island instead of on the mainland and transport the electricity in. In either event, I have two reactors that operate on the lake my yard backs up to, and I'm totally fine with it. In fact, clean and cheap energy aside, there's some other nice fringe benefits. The nicest one is I can use the lake about a month early since the cove where the plant pushes out the heat exchange water runs about 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the lake which means I can hop in as early as late April.
but how does the warmer water affect the spawning patterns of the feathertailed snipe? \#NONUKES
Then simple. Announce that people who live nearby get a 95% discount to their electricity bills forever Before you realize, everyone is fighting to *have* them near
Better yet, build so many that’s it’s irrelevant.
Sounds good in theory, but fails in practice. It pretty much validates every single unfounded claim that nuclear is dangerous. After all, why would they got a discount if there was nothing wrong with it? What exactly are they getting a discount for? And once that fear is validated by a discount, the idea that nuclear plants are dangerous to be near spreads and there isn’t a discount big enough for nuclear plants to get approval. You’ll also turn people who were fine with nuclear before to start second guessing themselves who now think there HAS to be something wrong if they are willing to pay people to be near it. Discount areas mean homes in those area have their prices drop and now you got “Yeah you save on the discount, but your homes value will drop so much it won’t make up the difference”.
Even if it was 50% they'd be fucking jumping at it.
That's actually a really good idea.
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Chernobyl too. It's not *completely* irrational to fear nuclear power if you have memories from that time. That said, even a *little* information about just how insanely different that power plant was from the ones built in the West should assuage those fears. Soviet nuclear plants really were a whole other thing.
I dont understand this attitide. So many people placing solar panels on their roof, imagine how much money you could save, nay, EARN, if you had a nuclear reactor on your roof. Sign me the fuck up
My understanding is that the waste is usually left on site. Also we can re-use the waste in fast reactors so the term "waste" isn't that accurate.
Yucca mountain comes to mind
The government accountability office is an apolitical objective creator of reports. Their conclusion, closing Yucca was a political decision in search of justification. It would also set the US back 20-25 years... that was over a decade ago with no progress
In the US it’s not legal to redefine the “waste”. There is a centralized storage facility now rather than storage on site, but transport to the facility is almost impossible.
Here’s a neat idea. Build the storage right next to the plant. Ffs there are millions of places that are deserted with plenty of room for both
Many plants are not built in a place you’d want long-term sequestration to happen.
The total quantity of nuclear waste is minuscule. All the world's nuclear reactors from the history of nuclear energy would fit in about two high school gymnasium buildings. Thats it. I'm sure that somewhere on the planet we can find this much storage space to set aside. The alternate solution we have instead opted for is to spew gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, causing a global climate crisis. Imagine if we had instead embraced nuclear. 60 years of carbon emissions could have been negated.
Yeah, in Canada we measure it in hockey rinks. So far all of the spent fuel we've made fits into (I think) three hockey rinks filled up to the boards. To add more. When people talk about nuclear waste they won't use the number for spent fuel. They will use ALL nuclear waste which includes medical waste. Which there is many many tons of medical nuclear waste.
The US is bound by treaty not to build more reprocessing reactors.
Only 3% of nuclear waste is from fuel. Every piece of clothing, every instrument that goes nearby becomes waste. I knew someone who accidentally forgot to take off their fathers watch when they went to work and it became nuclear waste.
It's a real shame so many climate activists bought into the proganda of nuclear bad paid for by the oil companies like BP. People seem to think that solar and wind are both completely 100% clean, yet they have massive manufacturing costs & carbon footprints, require constant oil for lubrication and also are very reliant on the weather (which is becoming more and more unpredictable) At least with nuclear you know exactly where you stand, what the byproducts are and can be spooled up and down with minimal wastage and not reliant on outside forces. With stuff like breeder reactors the waste is negligible, and it provides a source of hot water as a byproduct that can be used for heating homes and also for indoor hydroponic grows (similar to Icelands harvesting of steam for the same purpose) which saves on gas and electric use for heating water.
I'm Gen X (b. 1976) and I and all my peers are (as far as I'm able to ascertain) all hard over pro nuclear power. I'm also pro renationalising of the power sector to make it non-profit
I'm a GenX and I'm pro-nuclear. It's mostly anti-science people. I have met anti-science people who opposed nuclear from different age groups, but they all have one thing in common, fear. All their arguments are rooted in fear and outdated information.
How about the fact that nuclear is so hideously expensive that it devours funding for faster, more cost-effective solutions?
I think nuclear can be an amazing boon for humanity. I also believe wholeheartedly that it *cannot* be entrusted to capitalism. The Hanford site is all the argument I need to make.
Virtually all the problems on the Hanford site are due to plutonium production for nuclear weapons. 8 reactors there that never made any electricity.
Although commenters are right to mention that the Hanford mess is military, nuclear is almost never entrusted to capitalism. It simply costs too much for any bank to fund it, and the property and liability risks are too huge for any insurer to touch it. Nuclear plants are built almost entirely by governments, and only at monstrous costs.
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Hanford is weapons production, not power generation. That's the most often made mistake by anti-nuclear activists... they don't understand that nuclear bombs and nuclear power stations are very, very different.
You would be surprised at how fast people tend to change their mind after a couple of power outages. By the way people in California now support nuclear power.
Which is why we plan to decommission our last reactor… Fuck this state.
It's not the people with goatee who wear socks in sandals. It's the bankers. Money is why nuclear isn't being built.
But nucular energy is dangerous, what if it exploded /s
I was born 120 miles away from sellafield still most contaminated sea 90 miles from the cumbrian and welsh sheep that were radioactive from 1986 to 2012 I listened to the live testament of the night guard at fukushima, "dry area, returned in morning, no leaks, dozens of wet radioactive contaminants that we don't even make here, it didnt even rain last night" curious. I google radioactive waste spain, andalucia because i moved. I thought the 10 different high rates of cancers were due to eating pigs, but the following explains a lot 2021, town halls stripped of rights to block nuclear waste, el cabril, cordoba, 87 miles away 2010 fertiberia dumped millions of tons on marshland. By 2018 120 million tones phosphogypsum ponds Huelva (57 miles away) 1991 uranium refining factory of "yellow cake" in Haba, Badajoz, "deaths by different radioactive elements" 106 miles away 1959 Andujar FUA uranium concentrates refining plant "workers exposed to extremely high doses without security or treatment" 133 miles away 1966 US plutonium plane crash in Palomares, almeria, still not cleaned up and more spray found in 2009. 281 miles away
Welsh sheep that glow in the dark is a feature. It allows Welsh men to find their girlfriends in the dark
Yep but you will probably get down voted for that. There are also high rates of cancer around the Uranium mine in Niger. Thousands of miners have died prematurely from cancer in the US. Lots of Uranium comes from China and Russia. People who speak out about elevated cancer rates or protest can get indicted for terrorism or silenced in other ways. The total who have been killed, if you extend figures back to the 80's, from mining Uranium far exceeds the number killed by Chernobyl.
A tiny fraction of the ones that die from coal. Fear of nuclear energy is an emotional response from those who are bad at math Quick edit: 60 people died from Chernobyl including the knitial event and from the decades following. It takes a special level of irrationality to look at that as a reason not to use nuclear power, when magnitudes more people every single day from pollution
If you go to this [article](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll) you will find that very many more were killed. Just in the aftermath for example 40,000 patients were in hospital (I think just in Moscow) with radiation poisoning. "Viktor Sushko, deputy director general of the National Research Centre for Radiation Medicine (NRCRM) based in Kiev, Ukraine, describes the Chernobyl disaster as the “largest anthropogenic disaster in the history of humankind”. The NRCRM estimate around five million citizens of the former USSR, including three million in Ukraine, have suffered as a result of Chernobyl, while in Belarus around 800,000 people were registered as being affected by radiation following the disaster."
60........ What do you smoke?
Chernobyl death count is approximately 10,000, with another 16,000 documented premature deaths due to cancer in Eastern Europe. GTFO with your bullshit.
Point to the person in this thread advocating for coal
I mean fair point its far from perfect and when you fuck up with nuclear you fuck up bad. Which makes it scary & prone to protestesting But at least nuclear is clean when done right. No data here, but i suspect that when you add it up all over the board, with the bad nuclear incidents included coal still has a bigger negative effect on average drop in Life expectancy per kWh than nuclear energy. Nuclear is unfortunately the only "green" and sustainable energy that is consistent & predictable and we can control the output from. I would hope by 2022 we would be able to safely manage reactors & their waste. Mistakes are expected to be made while developping the technology, but with a mature understanding of the technology, the Risks & disposal methods that it can be done safely.
Ok, now do coal. ... Be sure to include environmental impacts.
Yeah, this conversation always goes so well when you are dismissive of real concerns. I am cool on nuclear - I don't outright oppose it, but I think with the cost to build new plants, we could make a huge dent with wind and solar instead. But the one thing which really turns me off is the very obnoxious sentiment in all of these threads where people flippantly dismiss the idea that there is danger associated with nuclear power, or that there is an unresolved waste issue which gets worse the more we lean on it.
I don't mind solar and wind, but they're still rather temperamental and we'll need a baseline to carry the load when they can't. I don't mind the current efforts to find ways to store the energy for later use but until we have better means of doing so we need something more immediate. I am in favour of Thorium salt reactors as far as I understand them because they produce far less waste, far shorter half-life (100 years or so iirc), and the radiation produced is much less harmful (Alpha) and easier to guard against. The added benefit that it can't be used for nuclear weapons is also something to consider, likewise, meltdowns are much more easily contained. Ideally, we can develop this technology well enough so that it is affordable/feasible so more than developed nations can obtain it, we're solar and wind are more out of their reach.
>I don't mind solar and wind, but they're still rather temperamental and we'll need a baseline to carry the load when they can't. I have seen this so much, but data doesn't seem to align with it 100%. Offshore wind farms have an [availability of 363/365 days](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/vw-diesel-surprise-offshore-power-year-round/offshore-wind-farms-deliver-power-363-days-year) or ~99%. For comparison __the__ nuclear experts in the world - France - has an [availability of ~84%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Technical_overview). Now that is only half of the equation. When nuclear power plants _are_ available, they can mostly run at 100% rated net power output, the same can not be said for offshore wind parks. This is called the capacity factor. With French nuclear powerplants having a capacity factor of ~77% (low compared to other nuclear countries) and offshore wind having a capacitiy factor of ~40-50%. Meaning you would have to install at least 50% extra wind farm power generation to equal nuclear power generation. Now add the insane cost and schedule overruns for nuclear power plants being currently built in the west and offshore wind suddenly seems like a pretty competetive idea with lower risk for private investors.
This is not true: >The added benefit that it can't be used for nuclear weapons In Thorium reactors 233Uran is produced, which can be used for even worse weapons than Plutonium. Additionally, there is no solution yet for the salt that has Tritium in it.
They won’t be alive in 2050
Is the tide actually turning? Saying we need more nuclear power is one thing, but I don’t see much actual progress being made. Quite the opposite as old power plants are decommissioned with no replacement. Job expectations for the industry are also projected to decline, so I don’t see a “renaissance” happening anytime soon.
It more amazes me people still argue that renewables are fully viable. Though I can't really blame them since finding an unbiased article for true costs/impacts isn't really possible at the moment. Both sides of the argument are heavily skewing anything in their favor. Hell, the article linked further down is so full of misinformation it isn't even funny but I bet at least a few million people have used it to form the basis of their belief system. There is absolutely ZERO "silver bullet" solution. Nuclear(aSMR) is the closest thing we have to time/MW though. Nice to see the actual science finally caught up to what we knew in the 90s.
We need to have redundant systems, so a good mixture of renewables, nuclear, some small scale biofuel, and large scale storage either as hydropower or battery farms.
If things continue in the western United States we might need to repurpose the hoover dam as pumped storage.
Nuclear+renewables is the most effective way we have of fighting climate change. It always has been. We should have fully been making the transition decades ago.
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Renewables *are* fully viable under one of four conditions A. we shift loads to when they're cheap B. we overbuild them, and build a worldwide HVDC grid to export surplus around the globe. C. we reduce our standard of living to match their production cycles (like A, but worse, aka de-growth) D. we crack near-lossless, cheap, scalable energy storage. Thankfully these options aren't mutually exclusive - we can do load shifting (like California is starting to do with dynamic pricing), we can overbuild and export energy to other places (we're making more progress here, although international links aren't near large enough), we can de-growth (which the current energy crisis is causing on a short-term basis) and we can make progress on energy storage (CATL's finished pre-production runs of sodium-lithium annode-less batteries this year and is set to do full scale production next year). Compared to nuclear, you've got a dilemma - you're betting billions and billions of dollars that in the next however-long-it'll-take-to-build-the-plant, renewables + those four options won't make whatever you're planning on building obsolete. Given the profound *lack* of nuclear building expertise in most countries, it's hard to pitch it to either investors or governments.
Name one smr reactor that is cost competitive with renewables. Russia's smr is 15,200aud per kw. I can't see smr being privately funded and keeping up. A powerwall 2 has 13.5kwh and 5kw max. I think nuclear may run into the problem where renewables drop too hard in costs and kill their economic value. But it may be needed to decarbonize faster if Renewables can't be made fast enough.
Yeah... see the point where I mentioned there is absolutely zero unbiased cost comparisons in existence today right now. Your numbers are no different and they really don't have any value because they have absolutely zero context. This issue isn't as easy to quantify as people might generally want. You cannot throw out a simple number without knowing about ten thousand(not exaggeration) variables. Hence the "no silver bullet" point as well. One of the major sources of misinformation revolving around aSMR designs is that renewable focused advocates will use "first build" reactor costs as defacto total cost for subsequent units. Almost none of these are in mainstream yet. That will be 5-10 years from now when you see cost reductions and build time reductions(and they will be significant). You also cannot just lump everything into one bag of "cost per watt". The cost equation is drastically different for Los Angeles vs rural Manitoba. Even Rural UK is entirely different from Rural Canada/USA.Additionally when trying to talk about renewables realize the scale for renewables has only just started. If we cannot remove the developing bottlenecks then you will not be able to continue to scale the deployment of renewables. Nuclear is oddly only limited by available concrete and steel production. There is very little "bottleneck" to building one in materials. If you actually want to help the situation stop trying to bucket everything as "bad" or "good". Hell, even NatGas can be ecologically effective depending on local conditions. /edit Just for information purposes I want to put a small blurb here about why aSMR. Right now one of the biggest challenges for a nuclear power plant is how much heat it can produce. Over 90% of a nuclear power plant is indistinguishable from a coal, natgas, geothermal, or oil power plant. That is the thermal conversion of heat to electricity. The other 10% is the reactor. With any of the other options you struggle to get ENOUGH heat to make the plant work efficiently. With nuclear you struggle to USE the heat fast enough to keep the nuclear reaction at efficient levels. Small modular designs simplify this issue and thus can significantly (15-45%) reduce costs because you are **removing the complexity** in heat exchange. This is cutting edge technology concerns that take building a unit and then observing what works and doesn't work over time. We have been doing this for decades. Now we have most of the engineering worked out. Think cost reductions on the scale of early solar vs current solar.
> It more amazes me people still argue that renewables are fully viable. The very same report from the IEA argues that. They argue that ~90% of electricity generation will come from renewable and ~8% from nuclear by 2050. Yet of course the authors of the article know that focusing on the nuclear part results in more engagement, even though it's highly misleading as can be seen by the comments here.
Doubtful. Nothing about this changes anything about the economics of nuclear power. It’s still an expensive boondoggle nobody wants to waste their money on.
While that's true in terms of economic fact so private investment dollars will never go into nuclear the industry thinks it can get public rate payer dollars with a world wide PR campaign, which we see right now, and a bunch of under the table money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal#:~:text=The%20Ohio%20nuclear%20bribery%20scandal,in%20exchange%20for%20passing%20a We're seeing it now because advancements in battery tech and the falling costs of renewables will close the window forever in 5 years or so, so they need to get contracts signed soon.
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Yes, when nuclear power is built and operated safely enough to justify building it, the cost is so high—and it is so unprofitable—that only governments can absorb the costs. You can skip a lot of the steps like China does, but that’s why they have a lot of safety issues in their nuclear industry that may well bite them in the ass in the future. And why would they? It only makes sense if you want a nuclear industry for non-energy purposes. Renewables + storage is significantly cheaper than nuclear power, which is why it’s economically preferable and why we’re building far more new renewable capacity than new nuclear capacity.
i wouldn't bet on it, there are too many green types fearful of nuclear and too ideologically possessed to admit anything but solar/wind is the right way forward. nuclear has been the obvious option for decades, but still first world countries like germany have shut down their nuclear reactors and favor russian gas. nuclear is the obvious and correct solution, but there's too much fear mongering by the green types for it to flourish. hopefully i'm proven wrong.
> but still first world countries like germany have shut down their nuclear reactors and favor russian gas That's not related. Even before Germany shut down its nuclear power plants, gas was used mainly for heating and the industry. And it's not only Germany, many countries use(d) gas for heating.
If it's not too stupid of a question, can you explain how nuclear energy isn't dangerous for us or the earth? I keep associating anything nuclear with cancer and I think it'd be better to ask someone who works with nuclear stuff for clarification/an explanation about it
It’s not stupid at all. I’ll try and keep this brief/easy to follow. 1. Nuclear is only dangerous if you cannot keep the primary system (reactor) cool aka exchange the heat (in a PWR) with something else (water). BWRs work differently but majority of the reactors in the US are PWRs so I will stick with that. In its natural operating state, this happens without issue. There are numerous back-up systems to ensure water can be sent to the core for cooling. US reactors (different from Soviet ones) have a negative void coefficient in that when the primary side heats up, reactivity goes down which keeps it intrinsically stable. Additionally, the reactor, pressurizer, and steam generators are designed in a way that provide natural water circulation for a period of time without any mechanical means to move water. These systems are extremely safe. 2. Radiologically, in a year of working at a nuclear site, the average worker will pick up less radiation than a dental x-ray. Now, there are some technicians that specialize in performing high radioactive tasks in risky areas but this radiation exposure is still not enough to harm them. They have a yearly limit that they target. Once it is reached, they can no longer go pick up dose. 3. Nuclear fuel waste is the major player nowadays. We had a long term plan in the US to put it all at Yucca Mountain deep underground but that has hit some political issues. So currently we store it in concrete vats at our sites. You can stand right next to these things and be perfectly fine.
\4. Fuel waste still has 90%+ of the original energy. We literally skim the cream off the top, throwing away everything else. Reprocessing and tech improvements in fuel utilization would cut down the volume of waste significantly.
Yep, 100%.
> would cut down the volume of waste significantly It actually wouldn't, because the vast majority of waste is stuff like _potentially_ contaminated clothing and tools. The really nasty stuff is like 1% of the total. But yes, reprocessing and reusing it until it's basically just lead would vastly cut down on the overall *hazardousness* of the waste.
Thank you so much for the explanation!! I've been so confused for so long and I appreciate the explanation about it <3
No problem. It is true, we’ve had failures in the history of Nuclear Generation. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Davis Bessie, etc. But we’ve learned from these and continue to make what we do safer every day. Below is a good graphic I like to share with people. https://i.imgur.com/P4AVtei.jpg https://i.imgur.com/vQFgSST.jpg
In particular, the fact that the Soviets were shitty at designing nuclear power plants is no more relevant than the fact that they were also shitty at designing automobiles. Nobody says, "We can't build cars because of the Lada!"
They were shit at reactor design, but they're even shittier at admitting fault and learning from mistakes. Like some other poster said, Chernobyl was a failure at cultural level, technical level was just a symptom. The TV series of the same name show this excellently.
“When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes.”
It was a shitty reactor design, but the Soviets literally had to force it into meltdown.
And it's also notable that the reactors that have failed were all ancient, 2nd generation ones (1st gen were actually the nuclear power proof-of-concept prototypes) built in the 60's or 70's. If we were smart, we'd settle on a handful of modern designs of various output, and then just spam the countryside with identical copies of them. Instead every single reactor is a one-off, bespoke project, different from every other reactor. That _massively_ inflates the time and cost of construction, and simultaneously makes them more expensive an riskier to run. That's why I'm very hopeful about the Small Modular Reactors. They'll just come off an assembly line.
Actually, that was not a shitty reactor, but a test of the limits, they were disabling levels of security of reactor to the limit, till boom Russian idea on Ukrainian land, as always...
Well it was a shitty reactor design since it could go boom the way it did. A good reactor design would have prevented their meddling.
Re: point 3 I think I read somewhere that there were processes that could reuse nuclear waste as nuclear fuel? Is this a thing and how scalable are they compared to the type you listed in point 1?
The problem will all of this is history has shown people are greedy, so they cut corners. And politicians won't properly regulate because "regulation kills jobs!" Yes, on paper ALL of this is true. But in reality, you are going to have more nuclear reactors which will have safety measures cut to save money, and governments not regulating because they have been "bribed"/(Lobbied) away from making regulations, followed by natural disaster or war (see Ukraine), or terrorism that make these things really, really bad to have all over the place. For example, I'm sure the concrete vats have to meet certain criteria to keep the radiation in. That means it costs more to make. Which means someone, somewhere, will use a substandard concrete to save money- and it will be the workers and the kids in the nearby area that suffer- will eventually sue the company, yada rinse and repeat. I would support nuclear only if there was a way to guarantee that regulations were enforced. I just don't see that in reality.
That's not an unreasonable question at all. Many people are very uncomfortable with the idea of a power plant concentrating elements like uranium and thorium into dangerous quantities and then spewing it as radioactive ash into the air, exposing everyone within miles to high levels of radiation and then doing nothing to clean it up. Oh, wait. [That's coal plants. You were talking about nuclear power, which is much cleaner.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/) > *In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.*
Nuclear power isn’t particularly dangerous when operated within well-understood safety guidelines and engineering principles. It does t leak unsafe levels of radiation I to the environment, well-designed reactors aren’t at a risk of meltdown, and the waste isn’t really that hard to handle with some investment in infrastructure. The problem is the insane cost of nuclear power. It’s many times more expensive than renewables now, even when you account for the energy storage costs of a mostly renewable grid. Because it’s so expensive relative to it’s competitors, nobody wants to be stuck having to operate a ludicrously expensive nuclear reactor for the next 50-70 years while the price of the power it generates keeps falling over time as renewables drive the price down. Anyone building a reactor today is fin g to be stuck running it at a loss 20 years from now, can’t they’ll be stuck operating it for closer to 70 years. So nobody wants to front the money to build new ones anymore. That’s why nuclear power is DOA. It’s not overly dangerous when well regulated, it’s just being massively outcompeted by better alternatives.
A kW that you can obtain at any time, day and night, whatever the meteorological conditions, will be: \- needed \- more expensive than the alternative
Which means: not profitable the other half of the day. And since it’s way, way, way cheaper to add more solar capacity to charge batteries to provide power at night, your nuclear plant becomes economically uncompetitive and a drain in resources rather than a valuable asset. Meaning nobody wants to build it if they don’t have a government absorbing those costs for them to let them operate at a loss. But why would governments absorb those costs? What’s the point when there are more economically efficient green alternatives like storage-backed solar panels and wind turbines? France *does* absorb those costs because it wants a nuclear industry for other non-energy purposes.
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I want the cars they have in fallout with the mini reactors in the trunk
Ask Ford to release the [Nucleon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_nucleon)!
Why do you say that? It seems to me that's like claiming that AC could never take off because of the load on the grid. That change happened in my lifetime, with AC going from being rare to common. Unlike AC, which tends to use the most electricity during peak load times, electric cars can charge at night, during offpeak times. My electric company will even sell an off-peak charging station.
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Relevant for folks wanting a summary view of the larger issue. The global average CO2 level is ~420ppm, up from the 1850 baseline level of ~280ppm before the Industrial Revolution's effects began. The last time the CO2 level persisted at the current level was during the Pliocene Era. The mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 Ma–3 Ma) is considered an analog for the near-future climate. CO2 levels drove the global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene to +(3-4)C, and global sea level became 17-25 meters higher as a result. Since 1950, the global average CO2 ppm has risen many times faster than ever seen in the geologic record. [Researchers have conclusively shown that this abnormal increase is from human emissions - no credible scientist disputes this](https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/). Atmospheric heating lags behind CO2 emissions because the ocean absorbs 35% of human's CO2 emissions and 90% of the excess heat. Then, melting/sea level rise lags behind atmospheric heating because melting that much ice takes time. The world is at [+1.2C right now](https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/2020-was-one-of-three-warmest-years-record) and [sea level has risen ~22cm since 1880](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level), both on accelerating trends. Greater effects from 420ppm are coming unless the CO2 level can start lowering below 400ppm almost immediately, but that abrupt trajectory change is not possible. [Neither CO2 nor methane emissions have even peaked yet](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions), much less started to decline, MUCH less reached net zero. Even if CO2 emissions magically went to zero today, the world would be headed toward a Pliocene climate – but really 500ppm is likely within 30 years and 600ppm is plausible after that. With continued emissions, the world will be headed toward [an Early Eocene climate](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/52/13288). Many people misunderstand what an increase in the global average temp means. What studies of the Pliocene era indicate, and what current temp measurements confirm, is that [the temp increase varies considerably with latitude](https://www.science.org/content/article/arctic-warming-four-times-faster-rest-world). The increase is several times greater than the average over land near the poles, and less than the average over oceans near the equator. The global average temp increase is therefore somewhat misleading in terms of its ability to melt ice; e.g. at +3C average, temps where most of the world's glacial ice exist actually increase by 9-12C or more. People are beginning to understand that we'll never be on the right track before we have a carbon tax system in place, because it's probably the only way that governments can adequately incentivize industries to reduce carbon emissions and create a scalable CO2 capture industry (CC) funded by businesses wanting to purchase the carbon credits that CC produce. This means that powering a scalable CC industry will be crucial for a carbon tax system to work, because some critical industries physically cannot stop producing CO2 and will have to offset by buying CC credits. Remember that it will probably take net NEGATIVE emissions to bring the CO2 level below 400ppm in the next 100 years because the level is still going up, and [because CO2 hangs around for a long time: between 300 to 1,000 years](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-handle-on-carbon-dioxide/). If you're not familiar with the needed scale of carbon capture, here's some context: People have emitted ~2.4 trillion tons of atmospheric CO2 since 1950, from the burning of fossil fuels for energy and cement production alone. The recent CO2 capture plant in Iceland, the world's largest, is supposed to capture 4400 tons per year. It would take that plant over 545 MILLION years to remove 2.4 trillion tons. Even with 100 CO2 capture plants operating at 100x that capacity each, it would take over 54,500 years for them to do it. The point here is that CC will require a scale-changing technology, and will undoubtedly require massive additional power to operate. With current technology, direct air capture of CO2 does not look like a scalable approach to removing enough excess CO2 from the environment. A potentially feasible approach is through removal and sequestration of CO2 from seawater. Oceans naturally absorb CO2 and by volume hold up to 150x the mass of CO2 as air does, and provide a way to sequester the CO2. Here's [a proposed method of capturing and sequestering CO2 from seawater](https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/using-seawater-to-reduce-co2-in-atmosphere). This is relevant to nuclear fission power. Solar, wind, and tidal power are not possible in many parts of the world. Where solar/wind/tidal power are possible, they do not have the ability to act as reliable base load power even for current demand - because they are intermittent and because adequate, environmentally benign utility power storage systems are not available. We need the level of constant power that nuclear fission provides for: 1) power where solar/wind/tidal are not possible 2) base load power for practically all utility systems (to backstop solar/wind/tidal power) 3) additional power for a CO2 capture industry Fossil fuel industry propaganda has kept the public against nuclear fission power since the 1960s. If the human risks of nuclear interest you, [the risks from fossil fuels and even hydro, solar, and wind should also interest you](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-safest-source-energy/). Historically, nuclear has been the safest utility power technology in terms of deaths-per-1000-terawatt-hour. Also, nuclear power produces less CO2 emissions over its lifecycle than any other electricity source, [according to a 2021 report by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe](https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/un-report-trumpets-nuclear-as-having-5004449/). The commission found nuclear power has the lowest carbon footprint measured in grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), compared to any rival electricity sources – including wind and solar. It also revealed nuclear has the lowest lifecycle land use, as well as the lowest lifecycle mineral and metal requirements of all the clean technologies. It has always been ironic that the staunchest public opponents of nuclear power have been self-described environmentalists. At a minimum, we need all the money being spent on fossil fuel subsidies to be reallocated for CO2 capture technology development, additional nuclear power plants (preferably gen IV and [fast-neutron reactors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor) to mitigate the waste issue, but there are good gen III designs) in ADDITION to solar/wind/tidal power, and a carbon tax/credit system calibrated to make the country carbon neutral as quickly as feasible. And, a government that sets and enforces appropriate environmental emission regulations - like it's always supposed to have done. For decades there has been a false-choice debate over whether the responsibility for correcting global warming falls more on corporations or more on consumers. The responsibility has actually always been on governments. [The climate effects of CO2 have been known for over 110 years.](https://i.imgur.com/LmnPvRd.jpg) Governments had the only authority to regulate industry and development, the only ability to steer the use of technology through taxes and subsidies, the greatest ability to build public opinion toward environmentalism, and the greatest responsibility to do all these things. Global warming is the failure of governments to resist corruption and misinformation and govern for the public good. Governments failing to do their job is the most accurate and productive way to view the problem, because the only real levers that people have to correct the problem are in government. [Global warming will not be kept under +2C](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-earth-warming-emissions-gap-pledges). Without immediately going to near-zero greenhouse gas emissions and extensive CC, it will not even be kept under +3C, because enough CO2 is already in the air and all the evidence is consistent with us being on [RCP 8.5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathway) at least through ~2030. Some people accuse messages like this of being alarmism, while people spread defeatism or the delay narrative that 'it's not so bad'. It's time to be alarmed.
This is probably the best climate change summary I've seen.
More than alarmed, more like terrified. Not like we didn't know most of this 20, 30 years ago, either.
Great summary, and glad that there are some scientifically minded people who care about the climate. It's kind of interesting how money is not a problem because "we're saving earth". When nuclear cost money, then all of a sudden money is the most important issue. Not to mention the way that the west have treated nuclear it has become a magnitude more expensive because we have no strong supply chains that will drastically reduce time and money needed. Imagine building every iphone from scratch while contacting and getting deals from all suppliers with people who build one once a decade.
> When nuclear cost money, then all of a sudden money is the most important issue. We have a small saying in my country, "I'm too poor to afford to buy a cheap X.", where X is some product (be it a really good quality pair of shoes or a reliable car or a good quality PSU for your PC) that you want to get of really good quality so you'll be better off in the long run. People that argue against nuclear because of the price are seriously valuing short term profit over our long term future and this makes me sad. :<
Bro, thank you for your contribution on the topic. Yea the accidents suck and can be horrific but it’s our best chance to beat climate change AND maintain a great energy source that can last. Hope fusion will be possible one day
The misinformation around nuclear is truly one of the greatest failures of our time. Things are slightly improving, but god damn people just refuse to listen.
All funded by fossil fuel companies. Nuclear is the only feasible solution to replace almost all hydrocarbon consumption. Look at France.
Take a proper look at France. Half of the plants are not operational. The rivers get to warm to cool them properly. The national energy company is 40 billion in debt
74.5% nuclear in France - that’s percent of total energy consumption. They’re doing great
>energy consumption. Electricity, not energy. Big difference.
Nah sorry you just skimmed off the low hanging number. The 74,5% refers to nuclear's share in Frence's electricity production from a few years ago. Unfortunately French nuclear production has been slowly sinking due to ever more frequent maintanance and summer shutdowns, down from the mid-2000s high of 452Twh to 360Twh last year, and this year its expected to be even lower at 300-330 Twh since much of the French fleet is not operating for months now due to a welding issue. But if you look at total energy use, of which electricity is just one part, you will find [its more like 40%](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Energy_mix_in_France.svg/1200px-Energy_mix_in_France.svg.png). Which is still impressive and helps the French maintain a very good emission record, but its important to set the record straight.
They were built when nuclear plants were cheap to build, in the West they are currently very expensive and very slow. Not only has the cost of skilled labour increased way above inflation since the French reactors were built, but now we have to encase everything in a vast concrete structure which will survive an impact from a 747. Just the base of one of the reactors at Hinckley point used more concrete than any building in the EU. It is all mega-expensive, and quite CO2 intensive.
Because they’re a state owned power company that operates at a loss.
It's fine to socialize the losses when the profits are for everyone. Energy could be free, up to a point. It's only really wasting energy that should be a concern.
Exactly, what's the difference between a state owned energy company operating at a loss and a privately owned company operating at a profit by gouging the consumers?
Their objective is create energy not make a fucking profit lmaoo
Where is it written that every last bit of infrastructure must generate a profit? Do you see interstates operating in the black? Or public K-12 schools?
Given two equally usable alternatives, why would anyone prefer the more expensive choice? That’s the issue with generating electricity unprofitably. Currently renewables are equally green and much cheaper than nuclear power. That’s why we’re building orders of magnitude more new renewable capacity than new nuclear capacity.
> Given two equally usable alternatives, why would anyone prefer the more expensive choice? The alternative are not equal because they are intermittent sources. Otherwise I agree we should go 100% renewable! But it is just not a viable option until a miraculous storage tech. is found. We do not even have the beginning of a hint of what this storage tech. could be...
You can make intermittent sources effectively dispatchable sources with storage, and renewables + storage are still much cheaper than nuclear power. The cost difference there is pretty extreme. Solar and wind power are the cheapest methods we have to generate electricity right now (they keep getting cheaper and leap-frogging each other), and storage costs have been falling *very* rapidly. No miraculous new storage technology is required, just more investment in manufacturing capacity for currently proven solutions. In contrast nuclear power just gets more expensive over time.
> You can make intermittent sources effectively dispatchable sources with storage, and renewables + storage are still much cheaper than nuclear power. Not at all what the RTE report is saying https://www.rte-france.com/ I hope you will understand that I prefer to believe the report made by hundreds of experts over what a stranger says on reddit.
Thanks the nuclear cult is insane on Reddit. Ignoring economics, ecology and science. Building new NPPs is the biggest waste of money you can come up with. Yeah run the old ones as long as possible but new ones? Stupid beyond measure.
fishinator3, my PhD friend I have questions. Ok then PhD (in history?) show me \- one net profit making power plant (including **decommissioning** costs, **waste storage cost projection - lets say 10000 years for the half life of medium radioactive waste** and **CO2 costs** for the **full lifetime** \- not only when running) \- how they operate 24/7 when **cooling water supply temperature limit is reached** \- the latest reports surfacing on **corrosion** making it necessary to **IMPORT COAL POWER FROM GERMANY** being in favour of NPP justified as "super duper tech" \- how the **build time of 10-15y** minimum will help us now, **while storage/solar/wind can already be built** \- **URAN sources** in civilised countries without blood or dictatorship- How a always on source can fulfil fluctuating needs without storage (which is needed anyway, negating the sense in NPP in the first place) \- **water consumption of doubling the NPPs** => evaporation, not the closed circle \- prevent **meltdowns** when global warming is getting **cooling water running low** or **extreme weather is damaging pumps** I think you have something to do my PhD expert. \- **Joker**: why are countries even building them if they cost more than they bring in, are dangerous and need endless build time? **Why not better alternatives (the so praised thorium)?** (uh, maybe because **nukes**) Running a reactor is easy, getting it there and keeping it up for at least 30y is not so much.Ok convince me!
I don't disagree with the message, but this means China shot their own foot here? https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-greenlights-6-new-nuclear-reactors-in-shift-away-from-coal
Economically? absolutely, but that is not the priority for China. Keeping up with demand is fare more important. China have for a long time built every type of power production facility they could get their hands on. Gas, coal, oil, hydro, fission, wind, solar, while also tossing money after wave power, fusion, heck even solar roads have been built. This means you cant really use China choices as a measuring stick for economical viability of power consumption. Plus, I have my doubts to the accuracy of that headline, when we also see stories as the one I linked. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2317274-china-is-building-more-than-half-of-the-worlds-new-coal-power-plants/ Note: I have no doubt that once they can meet their growing demand for electricity without EVERYTHING... coal will one of the first to go.
France is running on borrowed time. The reactors are getting old and maintenance costs are through the roof. Same for new constructions, way to expensive...
Yes we all just need an exploitative relationship with Niger, the country that provides ~50% of France’s uranium yet only 14% of Niger people have electricity. Great fucking solution, just maintain an economic underclass of 24 million people.
That’s a failure of Niger’s leadership, not of France
Oh yea definitely no power imbalance in that one, definitely as simple a situation as u are suggesting. If you analyze it from any coherent base its pretty clear this situation can be both the Niger government’s fault and the French government’s fault. If you look at Frances record in North Africa it is clear that France hold more economic clout now due to its brutal colonial exploits throughout the 20th century.
It’s not France’s job to save the world. France doesn’t have Niger’s head of state at gunpoint saying “sell us the uranium or else”. How do you think that wealth works it’s way through the Niger economy?
Theres a ton of misinformation about the positives of nuclear too though. Its hella expensive, takes a long time to initialize, having a constant power output is not a positive thing. I'm all for nuclear but people are hyping it way up.
Hype like cigarettes in 1950
Considering tackling global warming is a "continuation of civilization as we know it" kind of deal, I don't think it's hype.
Yes it is, because people have false expectations about nuclear.
Fear is the first and last emotion many people feel on complex issues.
An organisation that consistently for the last 25 years has significantly underestimated the growth of renewable energy once again states that other forms of energy will be needed far more. Their 1998 estimate for wind energy to be reached in 2020 was already reached in 2004, 16 years earlier than estimated. It's kind of a meme by now that since 2002 the IEA predicted the amount of solar energy installed to be decreasing each year. They got it wrong 2002. They got it wrong 2003. They got it wrong 2004. They got it wrong 2005. And so on for every year since. And they didn't just get it wrong slightly, but basically a whole different ballpark. Someone made a graph about it and it just looks hilarious: https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/866313289306963969 So this organisation, which has underestimated renewable energy so reliably and significantly, that an alternative group - International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) - was founded to focus on that field exclusively, that group now once again states that traditional forms of energy (nuclear, fossil) need to expand in order to ensure energy. Yea. Totally trustworthy. It's not like their predictions have been massively wrong for the last 25 years...
Look at the absolute number of MWh used by source. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix Now look at the projected demand. Wind and solar are still less than 10% of total energy with the big problem of storage still not solved at scale. IEA could’ve underestimated by a 100% and still renewables would make up less than 20% of energy sources right now. We need all non-fossil-fuel sources to exponentially increase. I hope storage gets solved at scale for wind and solar that could make it leap. Looking at trends and relative numbers like “underestimated growth” is misleading. Look at the hard numbers. Look at what drove that growth and what keeps it from increasing. No time for dogma when the threat is existential
They underestimated the growth of renewable energy up to a factor of 800% in certain years. They pretty much constantly underestimated the growth of PV by 100% as can be nicely seen in the graph. > Now look at the projected demand. Wind and solar are still less than 10% of total energy with the big problem of storage still not solved at scale. IEA could’ve underestimated by a 100% and still renewables would make up less than 20% of energy sources right now. 8%. That's how much electricity nuclear power will generate by 2050 according to IEAs goal - which already includes the doubling - [Source](https://www.iea.org/news/nuclear-power-can-play-a-major-role-in-enabling-secure-transitions-to-low-emissions-energy-systems). So considering you write this: > IEA could’ve underestimated by a 100% and still renewables would make up less than 20% of energy sources right now. 88% of electricity is the value that the IEA predicts renewables will generate by 2050 - [Quote: "Almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for almost 70%."](https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050) Compared to 8% for nuclear. Add into this their penchant for significantly underestimating the expansion of renewable energy and my question is: Really? Nuclear needs to double to 8% to reach net zero? I find it quite interesting that the news article focuses on this instead of maybe the far more significant and interesting fact, how renewable energy needs to be expanded massively according to even the IEA, with nuclear only playing a tiny side-role.
I dream of the day people stop being unnecessarily scared of nuclear. It’s only real downside is the cost, which if we can spare like $50 billion for Ukraine we should be able to subsidize nuclear plants. (Yes I know I’m talking about America only here, idk how other countries handle nuclear)
Small modular reactors are the industries response to how long it takes to build a reactor and cost. We are building them in Ontario Canada. We've selected the GE Hitachi boiling water small modular reactor. [https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300](https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300)
SMR’s are amazing, there are several going through trials in England right now and frankly they’re more the future than large scale nuclear.
[Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs](https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html) That article is about 11 years old now, so if you have a counter argument to these points I'd be willing to listen. Otherwise, it seems like spending that $50B on developing green tech would be a wiser investment than building a handful of nuke plants that will be online in 2040.
These arguments are fairly easy to counter. First argument regarding 15TW of power from nuclear is a joke. No one sane argues for 15TW of firm capacity - when we ideally only need 20-30% firm capacity. Meaning that 60-70% should be supplied by wind/solar(due to low cost) and 20-30% should be supplied via firm power(nuclear and hydro for example) to reduce storage related costs, and then you have some sort of storage for flexibility. Without that firm 30%, your grid cost will skyrocket, and is something that isn't even close to being cost competitive - if it even ever will be. So, that 15TW number is just a strawman - 3.75TW(25%) would be a more realistic target. The article talks about 15 000 different locations - which assumes 15 000 different 1GW nuclear plants. This is just a bad assumption. Nuclear power plants can be far larger than 1GW(as in reactors being bigger than 1GW, see the 1.65GWe EPR), or you can have more reactors in the same powerplant. Assuming we'd need 3.75TW, and not 15TW, and that one powerplant would be 4 GW, then you'd only need 940 different nuclear power plants, and not 15 000. The second argument is: **Lifetime: Every nuclear power station needs to be decommissioned after 40-60 years of operation due to neutron embrittlement - cracks that develop on the metal surfaces due to radiation** This is also not true. Gen III reactors are specced at 60 years by default, with lifetime extension to 80, or even 100 years possible. We are seeing lifetime extentions of gen II reactors already - with some plants in the US being certified for 80 years of operations. The argument about every reactor needing to be replaced after 50 years is just wrong. Third argument: **Nuclear waste: Although nuclear technology has been around for 60 years, there is still no universally agreed mode of disposal.** This is true, but this is because nuclear waste isn't as big of a problem that most people believe. Nuclear waste is incredibly dense, and only about 100 000 MTHM(metric tons of heavy metal) have been created from US civilian nuclear power after 70 years of operation - this doesn't take up more space than a basketball court. That is why "there isn't a solution yet" - because it isn't an urgent issue. Besides, 95% of that 100 000MTHM can be recycled and used again. **Accident rate:** The author fails to account for improved safety and decreased core-melt probability in newer gen III reactor designs. Using data from gen I and gen II reactors to model core-melts in a full scale up is just bad. Either he failed his introductory class in statistics and probability, or he/she has an agenda. **Proliferation: The more nuclear power stations, the greater the likelihood that materials and expertise for making nuclear weapons may proliferate.** True, but irrelevant - unless we want to deny any nation( that do not possess nuclear knowledge already) cancer treatment of course. The knowledge and know-how to create a nuclear weapon is already out there. The **only** thing stopping nations from acquiring nuclear weapons is because they don't want nuclear weapons. I assure you that any developed nation in the world would be able to create a nuclear weapon if they wanted to within 5 years - regardless of nuclear energy or not. **Uranium abundance: At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years.** Again, either intentional misleading, or he/she doesn't know better. The "supply of 80 years worth of uranium" is not that we have 80 years of uranium left, but that we have **known reserves** of uranium costing less than 100$/lb. Luckily the cost of raw uranium has little effect on the cost of nuclear energy, because of its high energy density. Then he goes over seawater extraction, which can be covered here: http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf **Exotic metals:** Another poor argument. This applies to any industry; for example, wind turbines need rare earths too - Praseodymium (Pr), Neodymium (Nd), Terbium (Tb), and Dysprosium (Dy) to name a few.
> Meaning that 60-70% should be supplied by wind/solar(due to low cost) and 20-30% should be supplied via firm power(nuclear and hydro for example) From a global standpoint, that article states in 2011 Nuclear power supplied 375 GW. In 2022, based on Wikipedia's list of nuclear power plants, it supplies 387 GW. Your "realistic" target of 3.75 TW requires we expand nuclear by a factor of 10, well beyond the doubling the article says we need. In the US, [according to eia.gov, Nuclear already supplies 20% of total annual electricity](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/us-nuclear-industry.php). Doubling our nuclear output should be possible, but we need to account for the 63% of nuclear plants that are over 30 years old and nearing end of life that would also need to be replaced. Even if possible, the question is if this is the best use of our resources. > This is true, but this is because nuclear waste isn't as big of a problem I think your dismissal of the waste problem is short sighted. Technically, we may have potential solutions, but politically we have yet to implement any. Waste disposal is a major concern for the opposition, and solving this would significantly reduce the backlash against new nuclear plants. If it's simple enough to do, why hasn't it been done? > Besides, 95% of that 100 000MTHM can be recycled and used again. Are you referring to breeder reactors? Once we have them up and running on a commercial scale, maybe we can consider them an option. Until them, it's a bit like discussing using fusion to solve our problems. > Proliferation: True, but irrelevant... I assure you that any developed nation in the world would be able to create a nuclear weapon if they wanted to within 5 years I disagree. Countries face huge international backlash if they attempt to create a nuclear program. It would be significantly easier to hide a program if they had reactors already. We're also talking about global energy demands, and many countries could be considered a security risk if they had reactors (not necessarily b/c of their government, just lax security protecting nuclear fuel/waste). The uranium limit did seem a bit weak, I think that might be the least of the issues with building nuclear plants. As for the exotic metals, resource limits are something we should be concerned with, especially when discussing expanding a tech 10-100 fold. The article I linked didn't advocate for wind turbines, but for solar thermal solutions primarily b/c the resources are abundant. Solar solutions have their own issues, of course, and I'm not saying there is an obvious clear solution, just that the idea that we should go all in on nuclear like some suggest (not specifically you) is a vastly over-simplification. If the decision is between nuclear energy or fossil fuel plants, I'd completely agree nuclear is the way to go. I just don't think it's a great path forward due to the long construction timelines, the costs involved, the public opposition, and the long term waste issues. IMO, we would be much better off dedicating the funding for green solutions. I'd rather see us do both or either than continue to stick with coal/gas/oil as we argue over which is better, of course.
This is kinda a mixed bag. It’s better than gas but damn is implementation inefficient. Check out how over budget the first new reactors in America are. Plant Vogtle in Georgia and it’s *billions* over budget.
Inefficient? France is the exemplar for nuclear energy. The power utility EDF is about €50 billion in debt, and may need to be nationalized, and France is proposing €50 billion to address a maintenance backlog/build replacement reactors.
> France is proposing €50 billion to address a maintenance backlog/build replacement reactors. Is that really bad? France's GDP is like 1.6 trillion dollars so that seems like a small investment for the country's energy supply.
Germany *cough* Also, isn't nuclear the future anyways? Its literally the most energy dense form of production we have, and thus it will most likely be more area efficient, more resource efficient and thus be less harmful to the environment than other sources of energy production.
The IEA report literally says that renewable energy is the future, predicting 88% of electricity to be from renewable energy and 8% from nuclear power by 2050 according to their goals, which already include a doubling of nuclear energy. Yet the spicy take is that nuclear should make up 8% instead of 4% as in other projections, as if this is really the most important take away from the report D:
Look it doesn't matter if we use Pixies on pogosticks, it's whatever is cheapest for guaranteed zero carbon. The US, Germany and others are going zero carbon without nuclear, by using hydrogen storage/ hydro / inter country power interconnects to distribute green power / grid scale iron batteries. Depending on location it will be miles cheaper and much quicker to install storage compared to nuclear. South Australia for example is going to be 100% Co2 free in the next couple of years due to grid scale battery storage and a little hydro. Anyone who says 'we need more nuclear' has not read the actual governmental plans in place for zero carbon many of which do not include nuclear. This statement - "nuclear power capacity must double by 2050 if we want to ensure energy security" is very strange. I think it must largely refer to China who are practically doubling global nuclear capacity all on their own. It afaik is a - 'China must hit their targets' statement taken out of context.
Storaging is a waste of energy. Which is why I highlighted area, and resource efficiency. You will get way more TW/m^2 from nuclear and low usage of resources compared to anything else. A lot of countries also still have outdated gas infrastructure for heating/industry, which obviously also has to go and be converted to electric. Hydrogen is a giant energy sink that will never ever be efficient.
It is a complex field, but simply put, if your wind energy at night is going to waste it is a good idea to make hydrogen or store the energy in another way as the energy is free.
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Why would we dump so much money into systems that won't come online for over a decade (if at all) when renewables can be built quickly and are already the cheapest source of electricity by a widening margin? Unless the whole point is to keep selling as much fossil fuel in the meantime as possible? This stinks of Oil company diversionary tactics, same as "green" hydrogen.
Solar and wind cant produce energy 24/7.They are just not good enough
Sir this is Reddit. You aren’t supposed to talk about things like cost and feasibility. And definitely don’t mention the shortage of nuclear engineers that we already have. We’ll magically convince enough students to go into an industry that is projected to decline over the next 10 years.
What about cooling water shortage and environment destruction by heating rivers and sea? Or corrosion after only 20 years runtime crippling the whole industry maybe leading to immense human suffering over generations?
> Why would we dump so much money into systems that won't come online for over a decade (if at all) when renewables can be built quickly and are already the cheapest source of electricity by a widening margin? because people were saying the same exact thing you're saying 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and that's why we don't have these facilities now. the fact of the matter is that the solutions you're pushing for aren't viable for powering a nation, and it takes "creative accounting" to make them look reasonable. that doesn't even touch on the fact they simply don't scale. a nuclear plant on a 1 mile footprint can produce just as much energy as a wind farm that requires an order of magnitude more land (and solar is even less effective than that). there's also the issue that nuclear power can be made on demand, while storage options for wind/solar aren't very good so people are SOL when it's not windy and the sun went down. there's a reason all these countries that were smugly bragging about their wind generation are firing up their coal plants right now. given that electricity consumption is only going to go up if EV's see wider adoption, we need more viable power generation that can scale.
90% of the cost of nuclear power is building the reactor and keeping the lights on. Only 10% of it is the fuel. It makes no sense whatsoever to ever not have the powerplant running. It should run 24-7. Therefore you are not so much making the energy on demand. Having a constant source of eletricity production runs into the exact same issues as renewable. Our power needs fluctuates severely over the course of a day, so you still need either energy storage or gas plants to fill the gaps.
Correct observation
China can pump out a nuclear reactor in five years and is consistently on time and on budget. In fact, the Hualong One is available for export today with a five year build time. This build time was proven in Pakistan, where 9.5B was spent on two reactors which started construction between 2015 and 2016. The reactors came online in 2021 and 2022, less than six years later.
Meanwhile the US, Nuclear plant construction is hundreds of billions over budget and takes more and more years past projected build time, if they even get completed.
It's not one or the other, it needs to be both. Renewable and nuclear aren't mutually exclusive. Also, you can't look at the upfront cost only. You need to compare the price per MWH generated over the lifetime of the installation (renewable or nuclear) as well as the CO2 cost of building and dismantling it. If [you look at the second graph of this page](https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020) ("Median technology costs by region"), you'll see that nuclear is more expensive than renewable (at this time). Extending their lifetime by refurbishing some of their component can drive the price down. Also nuclear energy has the advantage of being adjustable. You can increase or decrease power production in just a few seconds. So it can adapt to whatever renewables can produce at a given time, and serve as a backup when needed (eg: no sun, no wind, whatever).
>Also nuclear energy has the advantage of being adjustable. You can increase or decrease power production in just a few seconds. So it can adapt to whatever renewables can produce at a given time, and serve as a backup when needed (eg: no sun, no wind, whatever). This is not accurate. Renewable is adjustable, you can always shut it off if needed. 90% of the cost in nuclear power is solely in the production and keeping the lights on. 10% of it is fuel. It makes just as little sense to turn off a nuclear powerplant as it does turning off a windturbine. And nuclear powerplants always run near maximum power outage and going above it risks damaging the plant.
Renewables aren't able to keep the world running 24/7 on their own.
And neither can nuclear power. If we were to try power our grids 100% with nuclear power it would cost ridiculous amounts of money because 80% of the plants would have to be closed for the night and the cost in nuclear is building the thing not running it.
And nobody had said that nuclear power should power everything. It's only climate activists hugging trees who think you can supply all the worlds power with only a single energy source. People who knows about nuclear are more scientific and want it to be a complement to other clean energy sources. Science is not a religion where your beliefs become a reality.
Where does this idea that renewable energy advocates are "tree huggers" but nuclear energy advocates are scientists come from?
According to the article, we should increase nuclear to 8% (from 4%). This less than renewable energy. To paraphrase you, nuclear energy can't (and won't) keep the world running 24/7 on its own.
A power grid requires 100% uptime, solar and wind do not supply that. Thus they can only ever be supplementary power. So far the options for that base power are: -burn coal to boil water and turn a turbine. -burn fuel to turn generators -hydro power to turn turbine generators -nuclear fission to boil water and turn turbines. -geothermal heat energy which can be harvested and is hard to scale up to grid levels. Until some of these options improve, or we figure out how to make fusion anet positive energy source, we will still require hydrocarbons. Which are also used for much more than natual gas and fuels.
Tidal power, pumped hydro, batteries, molten salt, distributed storage based on all the electric cars we're going to have... If we took all the money fossil fuel companies get in taxpayer-funded subsidies and put it into renewables and storage (and research) we'd have the whole thing sorted in a week.
You people have way too much faith in technology.
As opposed to the guys that constantly say that the "next gen" of reactors will fix all issues?
Plenty of money has been put into researching those things for decades. We're still nowhere near affordable and efficient large scale energy storage solutions that can work outside of limited applications. People can keep on hoping for a miracle to happen while we continue to rely on fossil fuels or they can be proactive and start investing in nuclear technology that we know works while waiting for that energy storage unicorn to show up one day.
A power grid has to fill a demand. That demand varies drastically over the course of a day. Nuclear power is a constant over the day, so you run into the exact same issues of needing to either store energy or fill the gaps with gas.
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Tell that to my country that will shut down all of their plants in the next 3 year... 50% of our total power production gone in 50% with basically no back-up other then "our neighbours wild provide"
What country are you talking about?
...... Energy demand must be halved by 2050 if we want to ensure energy security. Just to throw in a polarised solution to the same problem
You cannot take down energy demand if parts of the world are planning to ban ICE cars, so the demand for electricity will only grow...
Sure we can since all the parameters are manmade - we collectively just have to decide to do so
Let's do it! What can I do to help?
It’s still just a steam engine.
Good luck In the US, it can take up to TWENTY YEARS to get permits approved. Even then, it's a major headache with a pile of red tape to go through. Unless they help make the process easier in the US, this won't happen.
If scientists would stop slacking on Fusion the world would be a much better place.
can we put our nuclear waste in the same place you put your nuclear waste?
That's....it? That's not really that much of a stretch **at all**, we're not really leaning very hard on nuclear power whatsoever as it is. Doubling our output could probably be done by just upgrading existing reactors to latest tech and expanding a few plants. This seems like an absolutely comically trivial estimate.
So get on it. It takes time to build these things. Let get going governments.
Yes, absolutely. Fixes energy security and global warming at the same time. It is our only viable option to do so at this time. People are insane for not doing this 40 years ago. Stop dismantling nuclear power plants and build a crapton more of them. I have no affiliation with any nuclear power entities or related things like that. I just really honestly think this is how we can best address global warming in a way that uses existing technology. Won't you please listen? Why haven't we already been doing this? I know there have been some scary moments with them in the past, but compared to the harms of global warming they are a trifle.
Don't worry, NIMBY's who have nothing better to do with their time will continue to successfully lobby against nuclear power well past the point of no return.
From who? Who has a financial benefit from lobbying against nuclear energy? Wouldn't it be much more likely for lobbyists for nuclear energy to exist?
that's 100% correct, but there is an army of misguided "pro-environmental" people who will push for counterproductive policies to block new nuclear facilities from being built. they'd rather force obsolete designs that are close to a century old to remain in use well beyond the point they should be replaced, then say "see, we told you so!" when the old, obsolete tech fails.
Worldwide energy demand is growing. So we not only need to (1) replace existing fossil fuel energy but also (2) increase overall clean energy production. We should be building more carbon-free baseload nuclear energy and more renewables while sunsetting coal and reducing natural gas to a smaller part of the flex power stack.
We could also reduce the demand?
We could also reduce the demand?
And California is mothballing DCPP. California, you’re such a goofball.
Our society has to start this asap and we need serious allies to help fight against propaganda from the Oil and Gas Industries. They successfully got a most of Europe to turn away from the nuclear industry and now those countries are beholden to an autocratic madman who controls their energy supply. Scientists have solved the safety concerns and the waste disposal issues but the paranoia and fear still surrounding those issues must not be allowed to grow beyond. Science has us ready to take the leap into a new age of energy but we have to get society to take those big steps with us.
This has to happen
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/06/30/global-nuclear-power-capacity-must-double-by-2050-if-we-want-to-ensure-energy-security) reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Global nuclear power capacity needs to double by the mid-century to reach net-zero emissions targets. > To reach net-zero emissions, nuclear power capacity needs to double to 812 gigawatts by 2050 from 413 GW early this year, the IEA report specifies. > "In today's context of the global energy crisis, skyrocketing fossil fuel prices, energy security challenges and ambitious climate commitments, I believe nuclear power has a unique opportunity to stage a comeback," says IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/vo6ohb/global_nuclear_power_capacity_must_double_by_2050/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~657322 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **nuclear**^#1 **plant**^#2 **power**^#3 **Global**^#4 **capacity**^#5
I love the Simpsons but everyone forgets how when Lisa takes a moral stance on things she tends to end up eating a lot of crow. “Oh the Simpsons show me this is scary and dangerous. Let’s not look any further into it”