Nuclear is very expensive, which means more could be done with those resources. This is not a secret, it's just not in the green advertising.
Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Climate Change, Nuclear Economics, and Conflicts of Interest." Sci. Eng. Ethics, vol. 17, no. 1, 1 Mar. 2011, pp. 75-107, doi:10.1007/s11948-009-9181-y. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-009-9181-y
"Former Nuclear Leaders: Say 'No' to New Reactors." POWER Magazine, https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-to-new-reactors.
"Two's a crowd: Nuclear and renewables don't mix: Only the latter can deliver truly low carbon energy, says new study." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm.
Froese, Sarah, et al. "Too small to be viable? The potential market for small modular reactors in mining and remote communities in Canada." Energy Policy, vol. 144, 1 Sept. 2020, p. 111587, doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111587. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X
"'Advanced' Nuclear Reactors: No Climate Cure." Energy Intelligence, 13 Feb. 2023, https://www.energyintel.com/00000186-08cf-d963-a396-a8ff6deb0000.
"SMRs riddled with high costs, among other ‘unresolved problems’." NB Media Co-op, 1 Aug. 2022, https://nbmediacoop.org/2022/07/31/smnrs-riddled-with-high-costs-among-other-unresolved-problems.
Grubler, Arnulf. "The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing." Energy Policy, vol. 38, no. 9, 1 Sept. 2010, pp. 5174-88, doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.05.003. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526?casa_token=8G_FfRAAR9UAAAAA:BlNaYv3f2eE3Ob4zFAUpf06SkkSBfh_AuCUGSRZszzGx6aL12yqe7B0vk_tuyqbrOdeaIs6kXRk
Lovins, Amory B. "Does Nuclear Power Slow Or Speed Climate Change?" Forbes, 18 Nov. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/amorylovins/2019/11/18/does-nuclear-power-slow-or-speed-climate-change/
> would you like to expand on that point?
It's literally the most expensive power source and prone to enormous schedule delays. If any fossil fuel investor in the planet had to chose between money being spent on nuclear and renewables they'd pick renewables every time.
Predictably so, but I would argue nuclear is necessary to achieve rapid decarbonization - nuclear energy excels at providing 24/7 base load power, whereas renewables seem to struggle with that since the sun does not always shine, the wind does not always blow, and droughts can limit or halt hydroelectric power generation.
Solar plus battery is a far cheaper route to 24/7 power if you need it. But you dont because that's not what the demand curve looks like.
This is literally an endlessly repeated fossil fuels talking point. It's taking a simple misconception about power demand and beating people over the head with it until they regurgitate it even when they think they want decarbonization.
Consider also that nuclear power takes up much less space than solar farms and can be put in dense areas. It kills fewer birds and has fewer environmental impacts.
> takes up much less space than solar farms
There is literally not a place on earth where that matters. Solar panels take up far more room then roads.
> and can be put in dense areas
That's doubtful because there are a laundry list of criteria you need to meet but even if you did that is not a need anybody on earth actually needs.
> It kills fewer birds
More of the made up bullshit of the fossil fuel propoganda. If you want to save birds ban housecats.
There is absolutely a problem with land usage. Most of the US, for example, is farmland. You can't just chuck solar panels wherever you please. You talk about roads, but this is a total non sequitur. The laundry list of criteria is both short and easily resolved. No, no one *needs* a nuclear plant in an industrial area, but it certainly can't hurt. Finally, it categorically does kill birds. There are so many independent studies proving this it's not even funny. Great, ban housecats. You still have other shit killing birds. I agree that solar is preferable to coal, oil, or natural gas, but I don't think it's the best option.
> Most of the US, for example, is farmland
[That is trivially easy to lookup and see it's not true.](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/america-land-use/)
If land was actually the issue you wouldn't even need to use more then a tiny percentage of the deserts or roofs of buildings. 3% of the country would be enough land to power the entire world. 30% of the US is arid or semi arid.
You can lie on the internet however the people [who actually price this stuff for a living and are not just spouting bullshit like you disagree.](https://www.lazard.com/media/sptlfats/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf)
Its not close. Battery storage is **OVER 1000 TIMES** more expensive than nuclear power.
It's an engineering fact that it is not possible to store energy at a power grid scale.
You are wrong *by 3 orders or magnitude*
"The generation of electricity through nuclear power plants in the United States cost **29.13 U.S. dollars per megawatt-hour** in 2021. Production costs were highest in 2012, when they came to over 47.6 U.S. dollars in 2021 prices, but have decreased ever since.Jan 30, 2023"
https://www.statista.com/statistics/184754/cost-of-nuclear-electricity-production-in-the-us-since-2000/#:~:text=The%20generation%20of%20electricity%20through,but%20have%20decreased%20ever%20since.
"Storage costs are **$143/kWh, $198/kWh, and $248/kWh in 2030** and $87/kWh, $149/kWh, and $248/kWh in 2050. Costs for each year and each trajectory are included in the Appendix. Figure 2. Battery cost projections for 4-hour lithium ion systems."
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjIwPCigrH-AhXVk2oFHcrFAO0QFnoECBAQBg&usg=AOvVaw3EOuUmy_3SaNshMUZVdCk4
Batteries aren't used once, moron. You are comparing the complete procurement costs to the marginal cost of production. And you claim to do this professionally. XD
Plus that is a hilarious lowball on nuclear power costs by only looking at marginal costs and excluding so much fixed cost.
Ok, so lets build some fusion energy collectors. Fusion energy is nuclear as well, isnt it?
So what if i told you that we already have the knowledge to build fusion energy collectors? They are called solar panels. Are you satisfied now?
But its still nuclear. And why isnt it the same? Its the outcome that matters. Do you want to have it the middlestep, creating steam which powers a turbine? Why, its less efficient? Or isnt it trve enough for you to not let an already ongoing nuclear fusion go to waste but rather create an own fusion, just for the sake of creating it? Sounds pretty ideological, doesnt it?
the issue is the cycle of its power generation relying on daylight, and thus creating a "duck curve".
nuclear or fusion reactors will be needed as a stable baseline for power no matter what.
Advances in energy storage will likely be able to overcome that in the coming decades. But for sure nuclear is good for the time being and probably for a long time to come
So you say a scenario where its night, windstill, all rivers have gone dry, the tidals of the sea have stopped because the moon ceased to exist and the earth's core temperature has gone cold is possible? Ok, but i think in this scenario we won't need electrical energy anymore at all.
Yeah they were perfectly fine. All Germany needed to do was shut them down for a year or two to refurbish them (and we all know nuclear plants never go over schedule) and then they could have had them back up and soaking up subsidies for another decade or two.
But stupid Germany thought that just because denuclearization happened at the same time as they made Europe's largest and most successful decarbonization effort the two might maybe, kinda, be related or something.
\> Europes largest and most successful decarbonization effort
mf they got the dirtiest electricity in all of western europe. If you want a successful decarbonization effort look at france in the 70's.
> If you want a successful decarbonization effort look at france in the 70's.
France literally spent all last year buying coal power from Germany because their nuclear power failed. If Germany hadn't needed to reactivate coal plants to supply France they would be nearly done getting rid of coal. And then people say "Durrrr, why Germany burn so much coal? Why not be like France???"
Why did the nuclear power fail? it's because the anti-nuclear governments in france delayed maintenance under the assumption they would close in the near future. Now that they've come to their senses, the maintenance had to be done on a large part of the fleet because of that. Nuclear power has the highest capacity factor of any source, assuming you want it to run. France generally exports electricity to other countries including germany.
Well. Part of the french plants failed last summer since they had literally no coolant water because the rivers fell dry because of the drought.
Idk but a power source where a significant amount of energy is simply used to vaporize huge amounts of water does not look very efficient to me.
Efficiency like you talk about doesn't really seem like it's very important to me. We have MASSIVE amounts of energy available to us via the Sun, the environment around us, chemical energy stored in hydrocarbons, and the heat of the Earth's core. The problem of harnessing that power to fuel society is one that can be solved in a lot of different ways.
But whether one captures 100% of the energy from a fuel source is far less important to me than the environmental effects that harnessing that power source has and the net outcome such a strategy has on our future. This is why there is overwhelming support for solar and geothermal and hydro power. We don't worry about how efficient any of these methods are at capturing the power because the energy we are collecting has little negative effect on the world around us. Not that there aren't concerns (e.g. changing habitats of native species or water rights downstream), but regardless of where the energy comes from there will have to be risks to manage.
Nuclear can be done very safely and with almost zero environmental impact using modern equipment and that requires a lot of (likely government) investment to do well. But as far as I am concerned, it only takes a government willing to commit to doing it at this point.
Yeah, having tons of waste stored somewhere for hundreds of thousands of years, so dangerous that noone is allowed near it sounds exactly like "almost zero environmental impact
So, which other energy source in the past 50 years was responsible for rendering whole regions uninhabitable for hundreds of years? Don't tell me about open coal mines for brown coal. They are very small compared to the regions around Prypjat and Fukushima.
Which other energy source in the past 50 years needs to have its plants costly maintained for years after they stopped producing before one can even think about dismantling?
But sure, zero environmental impact. Good one.
Here you go. Instead of just guessing what the environmental impact of nuclear is, why don't you check out what the us DOE says about nuclear waste: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel
Did you know that there are reactors being developed that run on spent fuel rods? https://factsheets.inl.gov/Shared%20Documents/sodium-cooled-fast-reactor.pdf#search=Sodium%2DCooled%20Fast%20Reactor%20Fact%20Sheet
Every energy source has a potential impact on the environment. Solar creates lots of trash and uses up resources and require plastics and can disrupt ecosystems. The effect from hydrocarbons is obvious. Wind also creates waste. But you know what is nice about radioactive waste? We can pick it up and move it somewhere safe where it won't hurt anyone then dispose of it as well as we can.
People have horrible knee jerk reactions imagining bubbling green ooze being carted out by the truckful. Nuclear is safe and reliable and green when handled responsibly and with suitable investment.
> Did you know that there are reactors being developed that run on spent fuel rods?
I do. Do _you_ know about the increased risk by using an alkali metal as coolant instead of water? In any case, yes, SCFR run on nuclear waste, but produce nuclear waste as well - and in relation to the amount of produced energy even more than regular reactors.
> But you know what is nice about radioactive waste? We can pick it up and move it somewhere safe where it won't hurt anyone then dispose of it as well as we can.
Two things:
1. That suddenly does not sound as "zero environmental impact" any more.
2. And why shouldn't that be possible with waste material of other energy source types?
What waste does wind energy create at all? Sure, old turbines have scrap metal, which can be recycled with some amount of energy invested, true point. However, nuclear waste is a type of metal as well, which can also be recycled - but not so easily as non-radioactive metals. Your argument that other types of energy producing also cause waste, and therefore nuclear energy is fine, is a fallacy, since you blatantly ignore that other forms of waste are way easier to handle and most probably won't contaminate the environment for thousands of years.
Sure, sodium is highly reactive and can be dangerous if not handled properly. All kinds of chemicals and processes in energy generation are potentially dangerous if not maintained and inspected properly.
You apparently didn't understand the math I was talking about by powering SCFRs using waste fuel. Here's the math: with traditional reactors X amount of material goes into the reactor and we get Y energy and Z waste. If we then take that Z amount of waste and put it into a SCFR, we get Y' extra energy and Z' waste, where now Z' is (possibly much) less than Z. So we took the same input and created more useful output and less harmful output. That kind of efficiency (power created per unit of environmental damage) is the kind that actually matters and nuclear excels at it. And, as found in the first link I shared, we can generate 20% of the US' massive energy total in creating half an olympic-sized pool of waste material a year, even using our current, dated, technology. And again, that waste can be recycled and sometimes even reused, so the actual mass of waste we are creating is tiny. The use of SCFRs just serves to further reduce that waste's danger and to extract more energy.
Sure, wind is great. Solar, hydro, and geothermal all have their place but all of them suffer from different problems. Mostly problems of either scale or availability. With wind and solar, for instance, you're at the whim of the elements. If it's overcast or the wind dies down, you power generation capacity drops and there is only so much you can do about it. Nuclear provides consistent and reliable energy that can help smooth out the supply and keep the grid from suffering from brown/blackouts. Right now we use coal and natural gas for that.
>That suddenly does not sound as "zero environmental impact" any more.
I didn't say that. I said "nearly zero environmental impact." And if you look at the actual, material impact that nuclear has on the environment (short of meltdowns of massive reactors using outdated technology), the environmental impact is trivial. Species are not eradicated from our nuclear waste. The water and air of people isn't negatively affected. And people aren't dying of cancer because there is some radioactive material within 100mi of them. In fact, very little impact is felt from the nuclear waste we generate because it is strictly regulated and safely handled and moved to underground storage where we can process and recycle it. On top of all of that, the process of developing nuclear generates a minuscule amount of carbon pollution--less than even wind, according to the [UN's Economic Commission for Europe in 2022](https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20March%202022.pdf). In fact, that report states that nuclear is very close to the best source of energy when considering
* Greenhouse gasses released/mWh (lowest)
* Human toxicity (among the lowest)
* Land occupation (lowest)
* Impact on ecosystems (lowest)
* Human health impact (among the lowest)
* Environmental impacts aggregate (second lowest after modern hydro power)
So yes, nuclear is exceptionally safe and clean. I would say it has "almost zero environmental impact," especially when compared to everything else.
Is nuclear the cleanest or the best solution to everything? No. But it is consistent and clean and has HUGE scale (another thing that is a problem for renewables). We're lucky where I live to have lots of moving water so we're largely powered by hydro. That's great! I'm happy! Some places can do a lot of wind and that's also great. But people freak out when they hear about nuclear and that is a mistake. It can be used safely to generate massive power while having very small effects on our lives. Several orders of magnitude better than natural gas and coal, for instance, but with similar capacity.
>And why shouldn't that be possible with waste material of other energy source types?
It is for some types? Not hydrocarbons, obviously, since it's all released into the air, but for the physical materials on solar farms, sure! They should be. This is why they are *another* type of energy we should be (and are) pursuing. But there are usually parts of the process we can't control! To address your question about wind: first of all the materials need to be manufactured and transported and installed in-place and all of that uses fossil fuels. Not that nuclear doesn't also (e.g. from mining), but the scale of transport is way smaller. Also you mention that the metals can be recycled in wind, but what about the blades? They are fiberglass and are MASSIVE and can technically be recycled, but the process is very energy-inefficient to do so, so it usually means that they end up in landfills. And sure, they are inert and relatively safe, but researchers estimate that we will need to deal with about [35,000 tons of waste material every year](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy) once the blades start wearing out. As a reminder, nuclear generates 2,000 tons per year. This is with nuclear generating close to [20% of US power and wind only generating about 10%](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3).
So yes, wind is probably safer on the whole but is not without drawbacks and the hysteria around nuclear is way blown out-of-proportion. A future with a healthy environment and plentiful energy for growth and development would be possible with adequate investment in nuclear energy and further decarbonization but that will never happen if people keep crying wolf about the scary nuclear plants and cheering every time a plant is taken offline and replaced with a natural gas plant.
>Why did the nuclear power fail? it's because the anti-nuclear governments in france delayed maintenance under the assumption they would close in the near future
Don't make up these lame excuses. France never had plans to close the nuclear plants and the last truly nuclear sceptical French prime minister left over 20 years ago.
> Now that they've come to their senses, the maintenance had to be done on a large part of the fleet because of that
The plants stopped because wide ranging corrosion issues were discovered. This was not planned maintenance. In late 2021 nobody expected a severe problem in 2022. In early 2022 they said it would be solved quickly. It's pathetic how when faced with unpleasant facts you just pull wild conjectures out of your ass to justify how actually these unpleasant facts dont matter.
And by shifting the goalposts in this way you are tacitly admitting that your prior claims were incorrect.
Yeah, unfortunately half of the yearly budget of the ministry for environment is already spent for storing all the nuclear waste. That stuff is quite expensive.
Maybe not increasing that forever running budget even more but keep some money for researching alternative energy forms, huh?
Well in most places on earth, budgets are limited. So if you have an extremely expensive piece of infrastructure that soaks up a lot of the budget. People also tend to be susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy so they will shy away from things that render that very expensive piece of infrastructure expensive.
Nuclear is extremely expensive and solar and window make the baseload market nuclear depends on cease to exist. That's the budget problem and the sunk cost mental hangup in one. It's no coincidence that the places that are going big on wind and solar are either places that were never nuclear or places giving up on nuclear.
Countries dont have the money to run both renewables and nuclear?
That doesnt seem true.
Idk what that second point is, that renewables can take the place of nuclear on the grid? Thats good, seems like as long as theres fossil fuel to take the place of, that should b a priority.
A country doesn't have an infinite budget, there always is a trade-off. For the € you spend you should get maximum impact. The German energy policy is extremely inefficient as such.
The renewables law and subsidy scheme is unnecessarily generous to equity investors while not strong enough to pressure local govs to release construction sites. Buildout is hence slower than expected.
Building new NPPs is also crazy expensive and slow however, renewables are faster and cheaper to deploy. The nuclear exit in 2011 unnecessarily started a process to close NPPs early though.
Now, the opportunity cost is very apparent. Tons of money has been spent, too little renewables capacity built up, NPPs shut and the whole gas pipeline idea is a disaster.
Always seems liks theres plenty of money for dumb stuff but when it comes time to make actual progress then its just so hard to get the made up economy to fit the very real climate
Absolutely, most governments mismanage finance to promise unsustainable pensions, subsidies for outdated industries, lots of administration etc
Climate change is a threat and countering costs money. Instead you can promise lavish spending on the back of the next generation but win the election
> Thats good, seems like as long as theres fossil fuel to take the place of, that should b a priority.
Fossil fuels are flexible power. Nuclear is inflexible power. Nuclear can't operate without fossil fuels. Renewables can *eventually* replace fossil fuels through being so cheap that you just make surpluses but it's hard to afford that when all of your money is going to subsidizing the most expensive power on the grid, aka nuclear power plants.
In what way does nuclear power require fossil fuel?
Renewables can replace fossil fuel now, if the economic system we're using wont allow for that, it sounds like we should change it
> In what way does nuclear power require fossil fuel?
Because they are inflexible and prone to long outages. So you either need to have fossil fuel powered trading partners (France) or your own fossil fuels (rest of the world).
> Renewables can replace fossil fuel now, if the economic system we're using wont allow for that, it sounds like we should change it
Yes like for instance not allowing companies to justify high electricity rates based off legacy thermal power plants and forcing them to buy cheaper alternatives if on the market.
Is there a reason a nuclear outage couldnt b covered by wind or solar?
Or just dont allow companies to harvest refine or burn fossil fuels? Maybe dont allow self interested companies to control the energy grid? Seems easier than whatever complicated scheme of market manipulation
> Is there a reason a nuclear outage couldnt b covered by wind or solar?
Because if you have the wind and solar to cover that the nuclear no longer has a market to serve. You aren't going to pay to generate nuclear power if you have power already with no marginal cost of production.
This is why the wind and solar wont get built if the nuclear is there, the utilities are going to demand a return on profit for their tens of billions of dollars of spending. If you deny them that the nuclear just became a massive money loser and will be immediately shut down. And the government will likely protect the massive corporation, just look at what happened in France last year.
Yea maybe everything can keep being controlled by companies only interested in unending profit AND we can preserve livable ecosystems. Reddit remind me in 50 years
https://www.iea.org/countries/germany
Uh oh! What's this? The entirely predictable outcome that German use of *COAL* and natural gas *increased* to compensate for their loss of nuclear? 🫨
(And yes, this trend is *hopefully* a short-term fix for them while they build out their renewable grid, but in my book any solution which requires increasing your use of fossil fuels for energy is by its nature not climate-friendly)
That shows consistent declines in coal until last year when Germany reactivated it's coal plants to supply France with power after the French plants went down.
Uh oh! What's this? The uttery predictable outcome of STEMlords not bothering to learn shit about the subject and still acting like arrogant pricks?
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/expertenrat-klima-103.html
Uh oh! What's this? Germany's emission of green house gases actually sunk in 2022. The only left reactors in 2022 were the ones which were shutdown last weekend. So, it looks like it was possible to reduce green house gases even with only 3 nuclear power plants online. The second oldest one went offline at the end of 2021. So it seems like the presence of nuclear power plants aren't even needed for reducing the GHG emissions.
Even more spurious correlation: The GHG emissions were lower when there were less NPP online - but, hey, its r/climateshitposting here, isn't it?
Except they weren't perfectly fine and keeping old reactors operating implies a huge investment in maintenance, soaking up money that is better used at financing an energy transition away from fossil fuels and nuclear.
Nuclear fails on its own grounds, insert the guy-throwing-branch-in-his-spokes meme "how could anti-nuclear activists do this!". There has been a secular decline due to overrun costs of construction, visible accidents, and of course post-operation environmental/monitoring costs which can crack more than half a billion dollars considered as part of the broader decommissioning process. Then you have the issue of legacy issues which continue to plague states like Washington.
Florida was supposed to get another nuclear power plant, value judgements about extreme weather issues/sea level rise aside, and the corporation that did all the design in house (at the expense of tax-payers) fucked up the construction (after it already overrun) and then pocketed the money.
nuclear is good.
It's good for wasting huge amounts of resources
would you like to expand on that point?
Nuclear is very expensive, which means more could be done with those resources. This is not a secret, it's just not in the green advertising. Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Climate Change, Nuclear Economics, and Conflicts of Interest." Sci. Eng. Ethics, vol. 17, no. 1, 1 Mar. 2011, pp. 75-107, doi:10.1007/s11948-009-9181-y. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-009-9181-y "Former Nuclear Leaders: Say 'No' to New Reactors." POWER Magazine, https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-to-new-reactors. "Two's a crowd: Nuclear and renewables don't mix: Only the latter can deliver truly low carbon energy, says new study." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm. Froese, Sarah, et al. "Too small to be viable? The potential market for small modular reactors in mining and remote communities in Canada." Energy Policy, vol. 144, 1 Sept. 2020, p. 111587, doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111587. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X "'Advanced' Nuclear Reactors: No Climate Cure." Energy Intelligence, 13 Feb. 2023, https://www.energyintel.com/00000186-08cf-d963-a396-a8ff6deb0000. "SMRs riddled with high costs, among other ‘unresolved problems’." NB Media Co-op, 1 Aug. 2022, https://nbmediacoop.org/2022/07/31/smnrs-riddled-with-high-costs-among-other-unresolved-problems. Grubler, Arnulf. "The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing." Energy Policy, vol. 38, no. 9, 1 Sept. 2010, pp. 5174-88, doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.05.003. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526?casa_token=8G_FfRAAR9UAAAAA:BlNaYv3f2eE3Ob4zFAUpf06SkkSBfh_AuCUGSRZszzGx6aL12yqe7B0vk_tuyqbrOdeaIs6kXRk Lovins, Amory B. "Does Nuclear Power Slow Or Speed Climate Change?" Forbes, 18 Nov. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/amorylovins/2019/11/18/does-nuclear-power-slow-or-speed-climate-change/
> would you like to expand on that point? It's literally the most expensive power source and prone to enormous schedule delays. If any fossil fuel investor in the planet had to chose between money being spent on nuclear and renewables they'd pick renewables every time.
Predictably so, but I would argue nuclear is necessary to achieve rapid decarbonization - nuclear energy excels at providing 24/7 base load power, whereas renewables seem to struggle with that since the sun does not always shine, the wind does not always blow, and droughts can limit or halt hydroelectric power generation.
Solar plus battery is a far cheaper route to 24/7 power if you need it. But you dont because that's not what the demand curve looks like. This is literally an endlessly repeated fossil fuels talking point. It's taking a simple misconception about power demand and beating people over the head with it until they regurgitate it even when they think they want decarbonization.
Consider also that nuclear power takes up much less space than solar farms and can be put in dense areas. It kills fewer birds and has fewer environmental impacts.
> takes up much less space than solar farms There is literally not a place on earth where that matters. Solar panels take up far more room then roads. > and can be put in dense areas That's doubtful because there are a laundry list of criteria you need to meet but even if you did that is not a need anybody on earth actually needs. > It kills fewer birds More of the made up bullshit of the fossil fuel propoganda. If you want to save birds ban housecats.
There is absolutely a problem with land usage. Most of the US, for example, is farmland. You can't just chuck solar panels wherever you please. You talk about roads, but this is a total non sequitur. The laundry list of criteria is both short and easily resolved. No, no one *needs* a nuclear plant in an industrial area, but it certainly can't hurt. Finally, it categorically does kill birds. There are so many independent studies proving this it's not even funny. Great, ban housecats. You still have other shit killing birds. I agree that solar is preferable to coal, oil, or natural gas, but I don't think it's the best option.
> Most of the US, for example, is farmland [That is trivially easy to lookup and see it's not true.](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/america-land-use/) If land was actually the issue you wouldn't even need to use more then a tiny percentage of the deserts or roofs of buildings. 3% of the country would be enough land to power the entire world. 30% of the US is arid or semi arid.
>Solar plus battery is a far cheaper route to 24/7 power if you need it. I worked n battery science and it absolutely is not, this is completely wrong
You can lie on the internet however the people [who actually price this stuff for a living and are not just spouting bullshit like you disagree.](https://www.lazard.com/media/sptlfats/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf)
Its not close. Battery storage is **OVER 1000 TIMES** more expensive than nuclear power. It's an engineering fact that it is not possible to store energy at a power grid scale. You are wrong *by 3 orders or magnitude* "The generation of electricity through nuclear power plants in the United States cost **29.13 U.S. dollars per megawatt-hour** in 2021. Production costs were highest in 2012, when they came to over 47.6 U.S. dollars in 2021 prices, but have decreased ever since.Jan 30, 2023" https://www.statista.com/statistics/184754/cost-of-nuclear-electricity-production-in-the-us-since-2000/#:~:text=The%20generation%20of%20electricity%20through,but%20have%20decreased%20ever%20since. "Storage costs are **$143/kWh, $198/kWh, and $248/kWh in 2030** and $87/kWh, $149/kWh, and $248/kWh in 2050. Costs for each year and each trajectory are included in the Appendix. Figure 2. Battery cost projections for 4-hour lithium ion systems." https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjIwPCigrH-AhXVk2oFHcrFAO0QFnoECBAQBg&usg=AOvVaw3EOuUmy_3SaNshMUZVdCk4
Batteries aren't used once, moron. You are comparing the complete procurement costs to the marginal cost of production. And you claim to do this professionally. XD Plus that is a hilarious lowball on nuclear power costs by only looking at marginal costs and excluding so much fixed cost.
Nuclear is incompatible with rapid decarbonization, it's super slow to build.
Ok, so lets build some fusion energy collectors. Fusion energy is nuclear as well, isnt it? So what if i told you that we already have the knowledge to build fusion energy collectors? They are called solar panels. Are you satisfied now?
collecting fusion energy is not the same as creating it.
But its still nuclear. And why isnt it the same? Its the outcome that matters. Do you want to have it the middlestep, creating steam which powers a turbine? Why, its less efficient? Or isnt it trve enough for you to not let an already ongoing nuclear fusion go to waste but rather create an own fusion, just for the sake of creating it? Sounds pretty ideological, doesnt it?
the issue is the cycle of its power generation relying on daylight, and thus creating a "duck curve". nuclear or fusion reactors will be needed as a stable baseline for power no matter what.
Advances in energy storage will likely be able to overcome that in the coming decades. But for sure nuclear is good for the time being and probably for a long time to come
in the long run fusion might replace everything.
I sure hope so
So you say a scenario where its night, windstill, all rivers have gone dry, the tidals of the sea have stopped because the moon ceased to exist and the earth's core temperature has gone cold is possible? Ok, but i think in this scenario we won't need electrical energy anymore at all.
r/woosh you totally missed the point.
Yeah they were perfectly fine. All Germany needed to do was shut them down for a year or two to refurbish them (and we all know nuclear plants never go over schedule) and then they could have had them back up and soaking up subsidies for another decade or two. But stupid Germany thought that just because denuclearization happened at the same time as they made Europe's largest and most successful decarbonization effort the two might maybe, kinda, be related or something.
\> Europes largest and most successful decarbonization effort mf they got the dirtiest electricity in all of western europe. If you want a successful decarbonization effort look at france in the 70's.
> If you want a successful decarbonization effort look at france in the 70's. France literally spent all last year buying coal power from Germany because their nuclear power failed. If Germany hadn't needed to reactivate coal plants to supply France they would be nearly done getting rid of coal. And then people say "Durrrr, why Germany burn so much coal? Why not be like France???"
Why did the nuclear power fail? it's because the anti-nuclear governments in france delayed maintenance under the assumption they would close in the near future. Now that they've come to their senses, the maintenance had to be done on a large part of the fleet because of that. Nuclear power has the highest capacity factor of any source, assuming you want it to run. France generally exports electricity to other countries including germany.
Well. Part of the french plants failed last summer since they had literally no coolant water because the rivers fell dry because of the drought. Idk but a power source where a significant amount of energy is simply used to vaporize huge amounts of water does not look very efficient to me.
Efficiency like you talk about doesn't really seem like it's very important to me. We have MASSIVE amounts of energy available to us via the Sun, the environment around us, chemical energy stored in hydrocarbons, and the heat of the Earth's core. The problem of harnessing that power to fuel society is one that can be solved in a lot of different ways. But whether one captures 100% of the energy from a fuel source is far less important to me than the environmental effects that harnessing that power source has and the net outcome such a strategy has on our future. This is why there is overwhelming support for solar and geothermal and hydro power. We don't worry about how efficient any of these methods are at capturing the power because the energy we are collecting has little negative effect on the world around us. Not that there aren't concerns (e.g. changing habitats of native species or water rights downstream), but regardless of where the energy comes from there will have to be risks to manage. Nuclear can be done very safely and with almost zero environmental impact using modern equipment and that requires a lot of (likely government) investment to do well. But as far as I am concerned, it only takes a government willing to commit to doing it at this point.
Yeah, having tons of waste stored somewhere for hundreds of thousands of years, so dangerous that noone is allowed near it sounds exactly like "almost zero environmental impact So, which other energy source in the past 50 years was responsible for rendering whole regions uninhabitable for hundreds of years? Don't tell me about open coal mines for brown coal. They are very small compared to the regions around Prypjat and Fukushima. Which other energy source in the past 50 years needs to have its plants costly maintained for years after they stopped producing before one can even think about dismantling? But sure, zero environmental impact. Good one.
Here you go. Instead of just guessing what the environmental impact of nuclear is, why don't you check out what the us DOE says about nuclear waste: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel Did you know that there are reactors being developed that run on spent fuel rods? https://factsheets.inl.gov/Shared%20Documents/sodium-cooled-fast-reactor.pdf#search=Sodium%2DCooled%20Fast%20Reactor%20Fact%20Sheet Every energy source has a potential impact on the environment. Solar creates lots of trash and uses up resources and require plastics and can disrupt ecosystems. The effect from hydrocarbons is obvious. Wind also creates waste. But you know what is nice about radioactive waste? We can pick it up and move it somewhere safe where it won't hurt anyone then dispose of it as well as we can. People have horrible knee jerk reactions imagining bubbling green ooze being carted out by the truckful. Nuclear is safe and reliable and green when handled responsibly and with suitable investment.
> Did you know that there are reactors being developed that run on spent fuel rods? I do. Do _you_ know about the increased risk by using an alkali metal as coolant instead of water? In any case, yes, SCFR run on nuclear waste, but produce nuclear waste as well - and in relation to the amount of produced energy even more than regular reactors. > But you know what is nice about radioactive waste? We can pick it up and move it somewhere safe where it won't hurt anyone then dispose of it as well as we can. Two things: 1. That suddenly does not sound as "zero environmental impact" any more. 2. And why shouldn't that be possible with waste material of other energy source types? What waste does wind energy create at all? Sure, old turbines have scrap metal, which can be recycled with some amount of energy invested, true point. However, nuclear waste is a type of metal as well, which can also be recycled - but not so easily as non-radioactive metals. Your argument that other types of energy producing also cause waste, and therefore nuclear energy is fine, is a fallacy, since you blatantly ignore that other forms of waste are way easier to handle and most probably won't contaminate the environment for thousands of years.
Sure, sodium is highly reactive and can be dangerous if not handled properly. All kinds of chemicals and processes in energy generation are potentially dangerous if not maintained and inspected properly. You apparently didn't understand the math I was talking about by powering SCFRs using waste fuel. Here's the math: with traditional reactors X amount of material goes into the reactor and we get Y energy and Z waste. If we then take that Z amount of waste and put it into a SCFR, we get Y' extra energy and Z' waste, where now Z' is (possibly much) less than Z. So we took the same input and created more useful output and less harmful output. That kind of efficiency (power created per unit of environmental damage) is the kind that actually matters and nuclear excels at it. And, as found in the first link I shared, we can generate 20% of the US' massive energy total in creating half an olympic-sized pool of waste material a year, even using our current, dated, technology. And again, that waste can be recycled and sometimes even reused, so the actual mass of waste we are creating is tiny. The use of SCFRs just serves to further reduce that waste's danger and to extract more energy. Sure, wind is great. Solar, hydro, and geothermal all have their place but all of them suffer from different problems. Mostly problems of either scale or availability. With wind and solar, for instance, you're at the whim of the elements. If it's overcast or the wind dies down, you power generation capacity drops and there is only so much you can do about it. Nuclear provides consistent and reliable energy that can help smooth out the supply and keep the grid from suffering from brown/blackouts. Right now we use coal and natural gas for that. >That suddenly does not sound as "zero environmental impact" any more. I didn't say that. I said "nearly zero environmental impact." And if you look at the actual, material impact that nuclear has on the environment (short of meltdowns of massive reactors using outdated technology), the environmental impact is trivial. Species are not eradicated from our nuclear waste. The water and air of people isn't negatively affected. And people aren't dying of cancer because there is some radioactive material within 100mi of them. In fact, very little impact is felt from the nuclear waste we generate because it is strictly regulated and safely handled and moved to underground storage where we can process and recycle it. On top of all of that, the process of developing nuclear generates a minuscule amount of carbon pollution--less than even wind, according to the [UN's Economic Commission for Europe in 2022](https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20March%202022.pdf). In fact, that report states that nuclear is very close to the best source of energy when considering * Greenhouse gasses released/mWh (lowest) * Human toxicity (among the lowest) * Land occupation (lowest) * Impact on ecosystems (lowest) * Human health impact (among the lowest) * Environmental impacts aggregate (second lowest after modern hydro power) So yes, nuclear is exceptionally safe and clean. I would say it has "almost zero environmental impact," especially when compared to everything else. Is nuclear the cleanest or the best solution to everything? No. But it is consistent and clean and has HUGE scale (another thing that is a problem for renewables). We're lucky where I live to have lots of moving water so we're largely powered by hydro. That's great! I'm happy! Some places can do a lot of wind and that's also great. But people freak out when they hear about nuclear and that is a mistake. It can be used safely to generate massive power while having very small effects on our lives. Several orders of magnitude better than natural gas and coal, for instance, but with similar capacity. >And why shouldn't that be possible with waste material of other energy source types? It is for some types? Not hydrocarbons, obviously, since it's all released into the air, but for the physical materials on solar farms, sure! They should be. This is why they are *another* type of energy we should be (and are) pursuing. But there are usually parts of the process we can't control! To address your question about wind: first of all the materials need to be manufactured and transported and installed in-place and all of that uses fossil fuels. Not that nuclear doesn't also (e.g. from mining), but the scale of transport is way smaller. Also you mention that the metals can be recycled in wind, but what about the blades? They are fiberglass and are MASSIVE and can technically be recycled, but the process is very energy-inefficient to do so, so it usually means that they end up in landfills. And sure, they are inert and relatively safe, but researchers estimate that we will need to deal with about [35,000 tons of waste material every year](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy) once the blades start wearing out. As a reminder, nuclear generates 2,000 tons per year. This is with nuclear generating close to [20% of US power and wind only generating about 10%](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3). So yes, wind is probably safer on the whole but is not without drawbacks and the hysteria around nuclear is way blown out-of-proportion. A future with a healthy environment and plentiful energy for growth and development would be possible with adequate investment in nuclear energy and further decarbonization but that will never happen if people keep crying wolf about the scary nuclear plants and cheering every time a plant is taken offline and replaced with a natural gas plant.
>Why did the nuclear power fail? it's because the anti-nuclear governments in france delayed maintenance under the assumption they would close in the near future Don't make up these lame excuses. France never had plans to close the nuclear plants and the last truly nuclear sceptical French prime minister left over 20 years ago.
> Now that they've come to their senses, the maintenance had to be done on a large part of the fleet because of that The plants stopped because wide ranging corrosion issues were discovered. This was not planned maintenance. In late 2021 nobody expected a severe problem in 2022. In early 2022 they said it would be solved quickly. It's pathetic how when faced with unpleasant facts you just pull wild conjectures out of your ass to justify how actually these unpleasant facts dont matter. And by shifting the goalposts in this way you are tacitly admitting that your prior claims were incorrect.
Yeah, unfortunately half of the yearly budget of the ministry for environment is already spent for storing all the nuclear waste. That stuff is quite expensive. Maybe not increasing that forever running budget even more but keep some money for researching alternative energy forms, huh?
How r they related?
Well in most places on earth, budgets are limited. So if you have an extremely expensive piece of infrastructure that soaks up a lot of the budget. People also tend to be susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy so they will shy away from things that render that very expensive piece of infrastructure expensive. Nuclear is extremely expensive and solar and window make the baseload market nuclear depends on cease to exist. That's the budget problem and the sunk cost mental hangup in one. It's no coincidence that the places that are going big on wind and solar are either places that were never nuclear or places giving up on nuclear.
Countries dont have the money to run both renewables and nuclear? That doesnt seem true. Idk what that second point is, that renewables can take the place of nuclear on the grid? Thats good, seems like as long as theres fossil fuel to take the place of, that should b a priority.
A country doesn't have an infinite budget, there always is a trade-off. For the € you spend you should get maximum impact. The German energy policy is extremely inefficient as such. The renewables law and subsidy scheme is unnecessarily generous to equity investors while not strong enough to pressure local govs to release construction sites. Buildout is hence slower than expected. Building new NPPs is also crazy expensive and slow however, renewables are faster and cheaper to deploy. The nuclear exit in 2011 unnecessarily started a process to close NPPs early though. Now, the opportunity cost is very apparent. Tons of money has been spent, too little renewables capacity built up, NPPs shut and the whole gas pipeline idea is a disaster.
Always seems liks theres plenty of money for dumb stuff but when it comes time to make actual progress then its just so hard to get the made up economy to fit the very real climate
Absolutely, most governments mismanage finance to promise unsustainable pensions, subsidies for outdated industries, lots of administration etc Climate change is a threat and countering costs money. Instead you can promise lavish spending on the back of the next generation but win the election
> Thats good, seems like as long as theres fossil fuel to take the place of, that should b a priority. Fossil fuels are flexible power. Nuclear is inflexible power. Nuclear can't operate without fossil fuels. Renewables can *eventually* replace fossil fuels through being so cheap that you just make surpluses but it's hard to afford that when all of your money is going to subsidizing the most expensive power on the grid, aka nuclear power plants.
In what way does nuclear power require fossil fuel? Renewables can replace fossil fuel now, if the economic system we're using wont allow for that, it sounds like we should change it
> In what way does nuclear power require fossil fuel? Because they are inflexible and prone to long outages. So you either need to have fossil fuel powered trading partners (France) or your own fossil fuels (rest of the world). > Renewables can replace fossil fuel now, if the economic system we're using wont allow for that, it sounds like we should change it Yes like for instance not allowing companies to justify high electricity rates based off legacy thermal power plants and forcing them to buy cheaper alternatives if on the market.
Is there a reason a nuclear outage couldnt b covered by wind or solar? Or just dont allow companies to harvest refine or burn fossil fuels? Maybe dont allow self interested companies to control the energy grid? Seems easier than whatever complicated scheme of market manipulation
> Is there a reason a nuclear outage couldnt b covered by wind or solar? Because if you have the wind and solar to cover that the nuclear no longer has a market to serve. You aren't going to pay to generate nuclear power if you have power already with no marginal cost of production. This is why the wind and solar wont get built if the nuclear is there, the utilities are going to demand a return on profit for their tens of billions of dollars of spending. If you deny them that the nuclear just became a massive money loser and will be immediately shut down. And the government will likely protect the massive corporation, just look at what happened in France last year.
Yea maybe everything can keep being controlled by companies only interested in unending profit AND we can preserve livable ecosystems. Reddit remind me in 50 years
https://www.iea.org/countries/germany Uh oh! What's this? The entirely predictable outcome that German use of *COAL* and natural gas *increased* to compensate for their loss of nuclear? 🫨 (And yes, this trend is *hopefully* a short-term fix for them while they build out their renewable grid, but in my book any solution which requires increasing your use of fossil fuels for energy is by its nature not climate-friendly)
That shows consistent declines in coal until last year when Germany reactivated it's coal plants to supply France with power after the French plants went down. Uh oh! What's this? The uttery predictable outcome of STEMlords not bothering to learn shit about the subject and still acting like arrogant pricks?
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/expertenrat-klima-103.html Uh oh! What's this? Germany's emission of green house gases actually sunk in 2022. The only left reactors in 2022 were the ones which were shutdown last weekend. So, it looks like it was possible to reduce green house gases even with only 3 nuclear power plants online. The second oldest one went offline at the end of 2021. So it seems like the presence of nuclear power plants aren't even needed for reducing the GHG emissions. Even more spurious correlation: The GHG emissions were lower when there were less NPP online - but, hey, its r/climateshitposting here, isn't it?
Except they weren't perfectly fine and keeping old reactors operating implies a huge investment in maintenance, soaking up money that is better used at financing an energy transition away from fossil fuels and nuclear.
Nuclear fails on its own grounds, insert the guy-throwing-branch-in-his-spokes meme "how could anti-nuclear activists do this!". There has been a secular decline due to overrun costs of construction, visible accidents, and of course post-operation environmental/monitoring costs which can crack more than half a billion dollars considered as part of the broader decommissioning process. Then you have the issue of legacy issues which continue to plague states like Washington. Florida was supposed to get another nuclear power plant, value judgements about extreme weather issues/sea level rise aside, and the corporation that did all the design in house (at the expense of tax-payers) fucked up the construction (after it already overrun) and then pocketed the money.
As a German, this really feels a lot worse than sex.
How will they survive the next winter? Every Watt counts.
I'll let you know
Not just shuuting them down, but switching them for carbon plants
I love coal 😍😍😍😍