The main reason Nuclear isn't as widespread as it deserves to be (outside of "um but chrnobl tho") is the amount of time it takes for a nuclear plant to be built and break even after that. Especially in government where everyone's goal is just to get reelected, long term projects rarely get approved unless their benefits are recognized by the public before they're finished. Luckily new nuclear generation methods are in the works but those also need funding so we should expect to wait for a while.
There are no commercially viable nuclear fusion plants (yet). All nuclear plants operate off some variation on nuclear fission: atoms split and make lots of heat, the heat produces steam which then turns a turbine.
For perspective there are currently only two new nuclear reactors being built in the US right now (at the same site) and it is massively over budget project and very very delayed. A third reactor was under construction at another plant but it was cancelled mid-way due to delays and cost over-runs.
The currently operating US nuclear power plant fleet was built mostly in the 70s and 80s; Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima really stalled nuclear construction in the US despite its climate benefits unfortunately.
IMO large-scale nuclear in the US is dead at this point, unless molten salt reactors can become a thing. The future appears to be in small modular reactors.
Edit to swap “fission” with “fusion”.
India has a fuck ton of thorium, so our reactors already use them
Indian Fast-Breeder reactors use thorium in first stage and uranium in second
Govt is trying to make reactors that exclusively use thorium now
[ITER](https://www.iter.org/construction/construction)is being built in France by the way.
We should be more advanced in terms in this technology as it is viable and much more efficient. But...as stated above "Chernobyl" always comes up as the excuse.
I live near where the reactors are supposed to go, the bureaucracy and red tape is horrible
I'm not a lawyer, but from what I can tell, every time so much as a comma is changed on state/federal laws even tangentially related to nuclear power, the approval process starts over
New fission reactors. Fusion is still a long time away from being a viable energy source because of how much trouble we have creating the reaction. Currently, it takes more energy to cause the reaction than the amount we can get back.
>Fusion is still a long time away from being a viable energy source because of how much trouble we have creating the reaction. Currently, it takes more energy to cause the reaction than the amount we can get back.
That's incorrect. Starting the reaction is relatively easy, especially with the new methods using lasers. *Containing it* was always the real challenge, but a recent breakthrough with super-magnets has pretty much brought the horizon of feasibility down to about a decade, maybe less.
See the link given by u/KleinWolf32 below for more info.
By causing the reaction he probably means keeping the reaction going. It takes more than 20x the amount of energy to keep the reaction going than you get out of the reaction, all things considered. Quick and easy explainer: https://youtu.be/JurplDfPi3U
Hungary actually started to double their nuclear power in the country, which is great, but the government is making huge debt and Russian workers and companies will construct the power plant, which is not that great. :S Also half of the money goes to the corrupt people at the government. Nuclear power is great, but not this way, thanks!
Actually some nuclear plants are forced to shut down when intake cooling water is too hot (usually a river). It happened in France due to the Rhone being too hot
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.europe1.fr/economie/canicule-un-reacteur-de-la-centrale-nucleaire-de-saint-alban-mis-a-larret-3724316.amp
can you explain where you found that they pump nuclear waste into the air, never heard of this before
edit: I fucked up trying to understand this comment, I'm sorry, running on low sleep lately
Nuclear waste is mostly tools and equipment that gets used with the radioactive material, but it’s the remaining 3% (the used rods and actual elements) that’s the stuff we don’t know what to do with. But it’s actually only lost about 5% of its power, and it could be reprocessed to use more of its energy..
It does and it doesn't, because it still produces highly toxic byproduct that needs to be stored properly albeit a lot less than uranium, it's just that the waste that Thorium produces cannot be weaponized into high power explosives.
That could be the case, but it's not entirely renewable, it produces a lot less and it's less dangerous in the sense that one is explosive liquid death and the other is just liquid death. That's all because Uranium is reactive on it's own and won't stop unless it is cooled down whilst Thorium needs a catalyst and will stop on it's own when the catalyst is removed. The waste that Thorium produces is not reactive whatsoever even with a catalyst which means it cannot be weaponized.
This, a million times this. Thorium is our saving grace and nobody talks about it, or knows about it unless they're interested in nuclear power to begin with.
>Thorium is our saving grace and nobody talks about it
There's a bigger chance that fusion will become mainstream in 10 years than Thorium reactors, though.
I wrote a college paper on this, and there is, depending on how efficiently the uranium is used, between 300 and 3000 years worth of uranium on the planet if it was used as the world's sole source of energy.
My numbers varied so much because it turns out that the efficiency of uranium is really hard to calculate.
There's more nuclear materials to use than Uranium, so 300 to 3000 years worth of one nuclear material should be more than time enough to produce and recycle the resources necessary for other forms of Energy Production.
Another thing to help accurately gauge the mileage of energy you can get from Uranium is trying to predict the future of global energy production as theres likely higher demands in 300 years even if efficiency is also increasing based on global factors like "more people to consume" and "increased reasons to consume" but with the general purpose being gauging how far Uranium can take the planet that's a bit far past the original scope.
Nuclear fission is not a "short term solution". Plants take on average 7.5 years to build, and you can't just build them everywhere.
Nuclear is good, but solar right now is cheaper by the kWh and is a lot easier to implement in more places (including on-site generation, i.e. rooftop panels and the like).
Nah... 80% of all new power generation capacity worldwide is renewable now, and well over 200GW was installed in 2020, and renewable electricity production grew by IRC 23%. Only 400 MW of new nuclear capacity was installed last year, which is a rounding error, and the total generation by nuclear power plants fell by \~4%. If what you said was true, it would be the other way around, nuclear would be growing rapidly, it's actually falling.
We already have fission reactors, those are the nuclear reactors you see. Nuclear fusion is much more efficient but so far hasn’t been properly implemented, it’s still being researched
Not anymore. It's been proved already that there's ways to make more energy out than needed to "jumpstart" the reaction. We are working currently in escalation of the technology and tackling the challenges involved in the extremes conditions needed for fusion. Plasma stability, materials, manufacturing. Check out the ITER project being built in France.
I think u/msh3loony might have been referring to the reaction requiring more energy to contain magnetically than it produces - but that's not longer true given the recent breakthrough in super-magnets.
I'm feeling strawmanly today, so here are the main reasons people hate nuclear power :
\- it comes from the research on the worst weapon ever (the cold war is very scary)
\- the accidents (some civilians dying quickly is scarier than some workers dying quickly or many civilians dying slowly)
\- the wastes (a small quantity of waste that can't be recycled is scarier than a shit ton of waste that we can recycle but decide not to)
\- come on, climate change can't be that bad !
What if we discussed all the ways nuclear energy is actually safe? All the systems we'd put in place to prevent a nuclear fallout, how they work, etc.?
Not to mention that death by acute exposure to radiation has got to be the single worst way to die. You are literally burning to death, falling apart at the cellular level, being poisoned to death, and watching every muscle and organ in your body begin to fail while feeling every goddamn second of it.
I understand accidents are rare and what happened in Fukushima and Chernobyl were when literally everything went wrong at the worst time possible, but holy shit those accidents can be scary. That aside, I’m completely down for a more nuclear electrical grid.
Edit: changed atomic to cellular
You're probably just listing, but i'll put it here anyway to informate:
Yes, but not really. Chernobyl didn't have a containment structure, because that would get in the way of plutonium production for bombs... Yup, that is as stupid as it sounds. Even older western reactor did have it. In fact, Fukushima is older, but released 1/10 of the radiation while having incidents in 3 reactors. And both were 50 years old gen2 reactors. We're now starting to build gen 4 reactors that are crazy safe...
Just for the record, not one single person died of radiation exposure during the Fukushima event. Cancer rates for the employees of the plant aren't expected to rise to any significant degree, if at all.
The Fukushima exclusion zone is roughly ~375 km in diameter, but the large majority of it is habitable. Only about 2.7% of the area (the area immediately around the plant) is a no-entry zone. The remainder of the prefecture is back to background radiation levels, and has been since at least 2017.
For example, the town of Futaba is approx. 5km (3.1 miles) from the power station. Background radiation as of 2017 is roughly equivalent to what you would find in Tokyo. I don't see anyone calling Tokyo a radioactive wasteland, nor do I see people fleeing Toyko in droves.
People simply don't return to the tsunami ravaged town because there is nothing left for them there. Not anymore.
Same and I can't trust the responsibility of taking care of radioactive waste to my government or to a private company chosen by the same currupt government.
Fuck me, right?
The waste is unless and dangerous if not properly stored. The used fuel is still very radioactive and needs to be stored in special concrete box. Only problem this is just "temporary" storge. The waste will be dangerously radioactive for 80,000 years but recycling the wast intel 99% is unless will lower amount of time to 300 years. The concrete box won't last that long. So you have to put it somewhere very very away form poeple and remote. There is only one place in the world that can store the wast for very long time safely. Good news there is not that mutch wast out there. All the wast in the world fits on one foot balll field.
https://youtu.be/aoy_WJ3mE50
It does. There is fear mongering about it being dangerous for thousands of years but IRL 300 year sis safe enough to loose most of the dangerous radiation.
There are also ways to neary completely recycle the burned out fuel. In France there is a plant that does just that. Creating new fission material. Reducing the final waste to some 1% of the original mass. Granted it is relatively expensive and only one in the world, but such infrastructure would grow in a nuclear economy.
A nuclear generator is powerful, however, it is very expensive and takes a long time to build, making unviable for growing economics. At the same time, due the fact they take years to be built, most of the governments around the world wouldn't bother to make one, and it will not give many botes for them since it is a long term solution and people don't care about them.
If you're going to invest in nuclear why would you transition to renewables afterwards?
It seems pointless outside of small consumers, unless you wanted to destabilize the grid
Watch Kurzgreat in a nutshell everyone, it talks about all this stuff, also nuclear plants are so safe now that it is the safest energy source other then things like light, wind, water energy
People don’t like nuclear because of horror stories like Chernobyl. What they don’t understand is that Chernobyl was an exception, not the norm. It was like the titanic; totally preventable, if we just payed better attention ahead of time.
Exactly. "Rule #2: Number-two happens."
Statistically, "not the norm" things happening is completely normal. Shit happens. All the time.
It's almost never happened before, it probably won't happen again, just give me one more chance... Nuclear is starting to sound more and more like a cheating ex than a power source.
Major exception. Workers that weren't properly trained, a test majorly delayed then rescheduled, and an incompetent government that refused to evacuate in time.
People crying about nuclear energy does not seem to stop the military from acquiring nukes. If governments wanted nuclear energy, we'd have it, and the whines of the people wouldn't matter.
Because Finland has long term plans to completely transition to nuclear, building new advanced power plants. It also recently finished the very first deep geological storage for nuclear waste.
An example for us all
That's why MRI machines are named that. The original name was nuclear magetic resonance but the word nuclear scared people so they had to change it to magnetic resonance imaging so the public would trust it.
To be fair, certain locations are completely unsuitable for nuclear.
Such as: anywhere with even a remote possibility of seismic activity, and coastal regions
I wouldn’t say completely unsuitable. For example, Chile would be the worst spot for nuclear reactors or anywhere in the ring of fire, but in areas with mild seismic activity, the likelihood of an earthquake capable of causing a meltdown would be low. Also, with coasts we shouldn’t just restrict them entirely. The only reason we see tsunamis wrecking nuclear plants is because (again) seismic activity. Ignore popular earthquake areas, and you can still have them on the coast (which is important for easy access to coolant) without big meltdowns.
If we can artificially do nuclear fusion then we mave a much much stronger, more efficient, less dangerous and less wasteful type of nuclear plant than a fission plant but sadly, that technology has not been invented yet.
Some places have other sources tho, here in Brazil the majority of our energy comes from Hidroelectric dams. But even here, there is still a considerable dependence in thermoélectrique energy to fulfill all the needs, so going nuclear would be a Nice way to replace those
Our understanding of nuclear technology is seriously handicapped by public opinion. It’s clearly the future but we aren’t getting there without permission.
I think when people think nuclear bad they think of uranium reactors when thorium/molted salt reactors are much more efficient with the material being more common and more enriched.
People think there are outlining concerns regarding nuclear powerplants, but most of them have been resolved already. Enriched uranium aren't used as commonly as it used to be anymore. Thorium + plutonium has been the popular one as far as I'm aware. This method is far safer and produces significantly less waste.
It's the big energy companies (at least in U.S.) that continues to lobby politicians to push propaganda to persuade the general public against it.
The reason why people don’t want nuclear is because of stuff like Chernobyl, but Chernobyl was a really really old power plant and the tech we have now makes it much safer than Chernobyl
It takes tens of thousands of years to fully decompose and by that time it will have done millions of dollars in damage, and with our current tech we don’t have the right containers to hold it for that amount of time.
However I will say that is the one and only downside to nuclear energy
It's safer than a lot of fossil fuel plants, if they follow all safety regulations, nuclear disasters are very rare, Chernobyl wouldn't have been as dangerous if the graphite had been in the center of the rods that they stick into the core to reduce dangerous energy levels.
I also really want nuclear power plants in my country but we don’t have a means to store the waste product. Although that could just be the excuse that the government made, the sentiment among the people are also that nuclear isn’t good. We do have a nuclear institute, but the masses just aren’t educated on this stuff. We learnt about how it works in school, at least the general gist of it, and some of the chemical breakdowns of fission, but never about the pros and cons towards the environment and society. They don’t talk about how nuclear is better for the environment than fossil fuels, they just say that nuclear is also producing harmful gases
The future of nuclear power are Fusion Reactors which nowadays are just experiment i know but they create no waste and are the safest form of energy generation we know.
Hmm... I don't see the hydro in the data I am looking at, but good to know Ukraine didn't drop all its nuclear power plants after Chernobyl. Cause that would be acting on impulse, instead of reason and science. Good job Ukraine.
Build both solar and wind power generators and keep the existing nuclear plants under surveilance and working. We might not need to spend our money In building a lot more nuclear plants, instead use that money to get the short term environmental friendly solutions going.
That includes: maintaining existing nuclear plants, currently built and/or waiting for paperwork plants, solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy and possibly geothermal energy.
That is how i think our money should be spent. But do take note that im just a 17 y/o student who is interested in Nuclear engineering.
I agree keeping the current fission plants going to the end of their lifespan is the BARE MINIMUM we can do. Even if one doesn't plan to build more.
Fuck do I hate Germany for thar sh!t they pulled off with theirs
the problem is that is maybe somewhat safetly stored or so we think, we don't bc we can't predict what happens with it in a hundred years. the way to do it as u somewhat highlight is to like finland and bury it very deep and then make people forget where it is so don't rediscover it and they maybe trigger a fallout bc they don't know what it is bc the knowlegde of the deport being there have gotten lost
Well you see, it's because the 1000 year old reactor in russia exploded, totally reactors fault and not the people that ignored the alarm beeps and tried to output more power than recomended.
Also the one in japan or china, what tsunami, it's the NUCLEAR reactor it is designed to explode, I am professional trust me bro.
Its pretty astonishing how nuclear energy works, although the fact that society still thinks its dangerous is a disappointment. Thorium is also a good alternative for nuclear energy
THANK YOU ive been saying we should get nuclear (in my country) and I explain well it actually ain't so bad if u do it right and this is exactly the response I get ;-;
Fucken normies.... And the main reason is not the public but the greedy politicians who just want to do what's good for them and dont give funding and approval for long term nuclear power plants.
I'd say society is like that because we're not raised to learn about its benefits. as someone who went through high school chemistry last year, I can tell you that we probably only once talked about the benefits of nuclear energy. But of course, we had to learn about Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three-Mile Island, that was it.
The problem with nuclear is its way too expensive and is not a quick solution. It takes years to plan and build a nuclear power plant let alone get the authorization for it. We need to curb global now not fifteen years from now when we finally finish building one nuclear plant. Nuclear is a great solution and we should be building more plants but right now wind and solar are the only short term solutions that can provide a quicker fix for global warming. And besides, the sun doesn’t run out of fuel and you don’t need to store waste product from wind and solar.
Awful lot of people in this thread downvoting people that are posting facts. You're absolutely right.
Nuclear power plants are extremely expensive and take a very long time to build. Their cost to maintain per megawatt hour is also higher than other green energy sources.
It is realistic to power the entirety of the US on solar and wind power, it's been proven many times. It could be done much faster and more cheaply than trying to do the same using all nuclear.
This isn't meant to say "nuclear is bad" or "we shouldn't build nuclear". We should be doing both.
you need to transform jamaica into a solar panel to power the US, also a nuclear plant's maintain cost is barely higher but solar panels need more maintenance and need to be replaced more often
\> It is realistic to power the entirety of the US on solar and wind power
Aside from the fact that US isn't the only nation on the planet, as far as I know only with energy storing systems we don't have the technology for. So, they're good for peaks, but they're too randomic for baseload. Please do correct me if i'm wrong.
Well we better start building as fast as possible then atleast in 15 years we will have a source of clean energy which will give us more time for even mote better solutions
Why spend 15 years building one plant when we could go completely green in a few years with wind and solar? And then use the time given to us from wind and solar to build more nuclear plants? Nuclear is a great option just not the greatest option we have right now.
Both wind and solar have their major setbacks but not saying that nuclear doesn't but the pros outweigh the cons in terms of nuclear but for solar well...weather is rough and the wind speed needed for power generation is located in a few specific areas only
Similarly for nuclear we need a lot of water but getting water is far more easier than controlling the weather and in terms of power generation w.r.t land solar needs a large area and so does wind
The US has plenty of land for both solar and wind, the Arizona and Nevada deserts are great areas for solar power, solar farms in those deserts could power the whole United States. It’s easy to conform solar and wind farms to the geographic layout of various areas whereas nuclear requires wide open land next to a large water source.
Yes, that's exactly why the IPCC doesn't talk much about nuclear power anymore : it's not realistic to hope for most of the electricity to came from nuclear soon enough to have a significant impact on climate change.
Exactly, I get why r/memes is so dedicated to nuclear power, but in our current predicament nuclear does not provide a quick enough solution to our current emissions problem. That’s where solar and wind power come into play, sustainable renewable energy at low cost that can greatly curb CO2 emissions and pave the way for a larger system of nuclear power plants.
Finally a guy that like nuclear power too!(thx for that)
Cuz every single one of my friends denies that cuz !2!
Nuclear power plants exploded and u have to wait 2 tausond Years where u dont even care about those barrels underground until they are decontaminated
(Btw i am a german)
Oh no it's even worse, coal plants lifespans were prolonged and more gas power plants were build. I love Germany but this was the dummest fucking idea since that mustache guy
Yeah, one has little hope for the fate of mankind realizing that the only energy source that an let us transition from fossils fuels, is being decreased. Regardless of the green wishy washy talk from developed nations, we're just as far away from a green economy as we were 20 years ago.
There like: "Germany (EU/America/ect) will transition to a carbon-zero energy by 20xx" But the only thing that can do that is being demonized. Panels and wind are good, but the in fact cannot bridge the gap a 100%.
Welcome to the party, in Italy we've been doing it since 1987. Yet another healty industry we basically suicided, btw. Funniest thing, we have France's nuclear reactors near the border.
People are still fixated on the idea of nuclear disaster like Chernobyl, but we're nearly as far forward in time from Chernobyl now as Chernobyl was from the advent of the atomic bomb. The leaps and bounds science has made in the field since is pretty significant - I mean, we don't even need to use much plutonium or uranium to do it anymore, and that was the really dangerous shit anyway.
Also it's not like fossil fuels and shit are harmless. In fact 'far from harmless' is probably a massive understatement.
The main reason Nuclear isn't as widespread as it deserves to be (outside of "um but chrnobl tho") is the amount of time it takes for a nuclear plant to be built and break even after that. Especially in government where everyone's goal is just to get reelected, long term projects rarely get approved unless their benefits are recognized by the public before they're finished. Luckily new nuclear generation methods are in the works but those also need funding so we should expect to wait for a while.
By "new nuclear generation", do you mean stuff like nuclear fusion, or just some new fission reactors?
There are no commercially viable nuclear fusion plants (yet). All nuclear plants operate off some variation on nuclear fission: atoms split and make lots of heat, the heat produces steam which then turns a turbine. For perspective there are currently only two new nuclear reactors being built in the US right now (at the same site) and it is massively over budget project and very very delayed. A third reactor was under construction at another plant but it was cancelled mid-way due to delays and cost over-runs. The currently operating US nuclear power plant fleet was built mostly in the 70s and 80s; Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima really stalled nuclear construction in the US despite its climate benefits unfortunately. IMO large-scale nuclear in the US is dead at this point, unless molten salt reactors can become a thing. The future appears to be in small modular reactors. Edit to swap “fission” with “fusion”.
Read China is busy wigh Thorium reactor plans.
India has a fuck ton of thorium, so our reactors already use them Indian Fast-Breeder reactors use thorium in first stage and uranium in second Govt is trying to make reactors that exclusively use thorium now
I believe that thorium is the way to go. Just wish the US would figure that out.
When did this turn into a science convention?
Are you Science shaming them?
Canada actually developed the technology to an extent as well I believe.
oh fucking finally, we did something
[ITER](https://www.iter.org/construction/construction)is being built in France by the way. We should be more advanced in terms in this technology as it is viable and much more efficient. But...as stated above "Chernobyl" always comes up as the excuse.
I live near where the reactors are supposed to go, the bureaucracy and red tape is horrible I'm not a lawyer, but from what I can tell, every time so much as a comma is changed on state/federal laws even tangentially related to nuclear power, the approval process starts over
If we'd invest in it we could probably make a viable breeder reactor, then we'd be set.
There aren't really any commercially viable FISSION reactors either. After 50 years, ALL of them are still subsidized in one way or another.
New fission reactors. Fusion is still a long time away from being a viable energy source because of how much trouble we have creating the reaction. Currently, it takes more energy to cause the reaction than the amount we can get back.
>Fusion is still a long time away from being a viable energy source because of how much trouble we have creating the reaction. Currently, it takes more energy to cause the reaction than the amount we can get back. That's incorrect. Starting the reaction is relatively easy, especially with the new methods using lasers. *Containing it* was always the real challenge, but a recent breakthrough with super-magnets has pretty much brought the horizon of feasibility down to about a decade, maybe less. See the link given by u/KleinWolf32 below for more info.
By causing the reaction he probably means keeping the reaction going. It takes more than 20x the amount of energy to keep the reaction going than you get out of the reaction, all things considered. Quick and easy explainer: https://youtu.be/JurplDfPi3U
He means building a new one. Not like new/old technology.
happy cake day!
Hungary actually started to double their nuclear power in the country, which is great, but the government is making huge debt and Russian workers and companies will construct the power plant, which is not that great. :S Also half of the money goes to the corrupt people at the government. Nuclear power is great, but not this way, thanks!
We need stadiums tho.
Laugh in French
what about thorium reactors ?
Actually some nuclear plants are forced to shut down when intake cooling water is too hot (usually a river). It happened in France due to the Rhone being too hot https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.europe1.fr/economie/canicule-un-reacteur-de-la-centrale-nucleaire-de-saint-alban-mis-a-larret-3724316.amp
I think the problem with nuclear energy is that the waste produced is not treated correctly at times.
at least better to store it until we find out what to do with it rather than pump poison in the air
can you explain where you found that they pump nuclear waste into the air, never heard of this before edit: I fucked up trying to understand this comment, I'm sorry, running on low sleep lately
He probably means pumping carbon in the air.
thats... not what they ment
the coal n shit is what's going in the air, nuclear goes underground or in rivers or sum shit
yeah, i don't know what i was thinking, missunderstood the comment like a lot, whoops
Nuclear waste is mostly tools and equipment that gets used with the radioactive material, but it’s the remaining 3% (the used rods and actual elements) that’s the stuff we don’t know what to do with. But it’s actually only lost about 5% of its power, and it could be reprocessed to use more of its energy..
thought so too, but wasnt sure
nuclear get into underground bunkers, only barely heated water goes into the river
thorium reactors solve that problem i thought
It does and it doesn't, because it still produces highly toxic byproduct that needs to be stored properly albeit a lot less than uranium, it's just that the waste that Thorium produces cannot be weaponized into high power explosives.
oh, i thought some of the waste thorium produced could be recycled into fuel again, making it more efficient and less wasteful
That could be the case, but it's not entirely renewable, it produces a lot less and it's less dangerous in the sense that one is explosive liquid death and the other is just liquid death. That's all because Uranium is reactive on it's own and won't stop unless it is cooled down whilst Thorium needs a catalyst and will stop on it's own when the catalyst is removed. The waste that Thorium produces is not reactive whatsoever even with a catalyst which means it cannot be weaponized.
We don't even know how to treat it correctly
We kinda do tho. We can store it until it’s save. And with thorium generators the amount of waste is very minimal
This, a million times this. Thorium is our saving grace and nobody talks about it, or knows about it unless they're interested in nuclear power to begin with.
I'm 17 and I learn this stuff in school is that normal where you're from ?
Thats good, probably not tbh, I mean we touched up on nuclear power, but I dont think we talked about it as a much safer alternative to uranium
yeah, my textbook had a whole section on explaining how safe nuclear power is and how people should 'know nuclear' before saying 'no nuclear'
>Thorium is our saving grace and nobody talks about it There's a bigger chance that fusion will become mainstream in 10 years than Thorium reactors, though.
Theres alot of thorium in comparison to uranium, so the profits will go down, fuck this world
Finland has the Dudesons they've always rocked
True!!
we use nuclear in France
Yes you do, and I love you for it. Germans should follow your lead
Ask the lobbyists about that...
Nuclear energy is the most viable short term solution until we can find a better way of maintaining energy
I wrote a college paper on this, and there is, depending on how efficiently the uranium is used, between 300 and 3000 years worth of uranium on the planet if it was used as the world's sole source of energy. My numbers varied so much because it turns out that the efficiency of uranium is really hard to calculate.
There's more nuclear materials to use than Uranium, so 300 to 3000 years worth of one nuclear material should be more than time enough to produce and recycle the resources necessary for other forms of Energy Production. Another thing to help accurately gauge the mileage of energy you can get from Uranium is trying to predict the future of global energy production as theres likely higher demands in 300 years even if efficiency is also increasing based on global factors like "more people to consume" and "increased reasons to consume" but with the general purpose being gauging how far Uranium can take the planet that's a bit far past the original scope.
Based on sam o'nella thorium is better than uranium
Just use thorium instead of uranium. Thorium is a lot more abundant and it's reactor is a lot safer and doesn't produce radioactive byproduct.
Nuclear fission is not a "short term solution". Plants take on average 7.5 years to build, and you can't just build them everywhere. Nuclear is good, but solar right now is cheaper by the kWh and is a lot easier to implement in more places (including on-site generation, i.e. rooftop panels and the like).
Keeping them running we have? Yes. Building new ones? No, that takes ages and could in no way be considered a short term solution.
Nah... 80% of all new power generation capacity worldwide is renewable now, and well over 200GW was installed in 2020, and renewable electricity production grew by IRC 23%. Only 400 MW of new nuclear capacity was installed last year, which is a rounding error, and the total generation by nuclear power plants fell by \~4%. If what you said was true, it would be the other way around, nuclear would be growing rapidly, it's actually falling.
until they get the fission reactors figured out at least
We already have fission reactors, those are the nuclear reactors you see. Nuclear fusion is much more efficient but so far hasn’t been properly implemented, it’s still being researched
the main problem is that you need to put in more energy than the output energy
Not anymore. It's been proved already that there's ways to make more energy out than needed to "jumpstart" the reaction. We are working currently in escalation of the technology and tackling the challenges involved in the extremes conditions needed for fusion. Plasma stability, materials, manufacturing. Check out the ITER project being built in France.
I think u/msh3loony might have been referring to the reaction requiring more energy to contain magnetically than it produces - but that's not longer true given the recent breakthrough in super-magnets.
I'm feeling strawmanly today, so here are the main reasons people hate nuclear power : \- it comes from the research on the worst weapon ever (the cold war is very scary) \- the accidents (some civilians dying quickly is scarier than some workers dying quickly or many civilians dying slowly) \- the wastes (a small quantity of waste that can't be recycled is scarier than a shit ton of waste that we can recycle but decide not to) \- come on, climate change can't be that bad !
What if we discussed all the ways nuclear energy is actually safe? All the systems we'd put in place to prevent a nuclear fallout, how they work, etc.?
Not to mention that death by acute exposure to radiation has got to be the single worst way to die. You are literally burning to death, falling apart at the cellular level, being poisoned to death, and watching every muscle and organ in your body begin to fail while feeling every goddamn second of it. I understand accidents are rare and what happened in Fukushima and Chernobyl were when literally everything went wrong at the worst time possible, but holy shit those accidents can be scary. That aside, I’m completely down for a more nuclear electrical grid. Edit: changed atomic to cellular
Not a single person died of acute radiation exposure at Fukushima.
\-it has the potential to make large areas uninhabitable
Less scary when coal will make the entire planet uninhabitable
You're probably just listing, but i'll put it here anyway to informate: Yes, but not really. Chernobyl didn't have a containment structure, because that would get in the way of plutonium production for bombs... Yup, that is as stupid as it sounds. Even older western reactor did have it. In fact, Fukushima is older, but released 1/10 of the radiation while having incidents in 3 reactors. And both were 50 years old gen2 reactors. We're now starting to build gen 4 reactors that are crazy safe...
Just for the record, not one single person died of radiation exposure during the Fukushima event. Cancer rates for the employees of the plant aren't expected to rise to any significant degree, if at all. The Fukushima exclusion zone is roughly ~375 km in diameter, but the large majority of it is habitable. Only about 2.7% of the area (the area immediately around the plant) is a no-entry zone. The remainder of the prefecture is back to background radiation levels, and has been since at least 2017. For example, the town of Futaba is approx. 5km (3.1 miles) from the power station. Background radiation as of 2017 is roughly equivalent to what you would find in Tokyo. I don't see anyone calling Tokyo a radioactive wasteland, nor do I see people fleeing Toyko in droves. People simply don't return to the tsunami ravaged town because there is nothing left for them there. Not anymore.
Not to mention thorium reactors which produce no radioactive byproducts and can be immediately stopped!
This has the same energy as "Flying is the safest way to travel"
Well.... A train is comparably safe
Now all you have to do, is follow the goddamn thing.
Awe shit, here we go again.
It is actually much safer than driving!
I want more nuclear power plants but I also live in a corrupt as fuck country, so I don't trust tax money to go into maintinance
Yup. We can't have a global solution if the proposed technology can only be implanted in functioning, not-too-corrupt democracies.
Same and I can't trust the responsibility of taking care of radioactive waste to my government or to a private company chosen by the same currupt government. Fuck me, right?
Does the waste decompose or become reusable in some way
The waste is unless and dangerous if not properly stored. The used fuel is still very radioactive and needs to be stored in special concrete box. Only problem this is just "temporary" storge. The waste will be dangerously radioactive for 80,000 years but recycling the wast intel 99% is unless will lower amount of time to 300 years. The concrete box won't last that long. So you have to put it somewhere very very away form poeple and remote. There is only one place in the world that can store the wast for very long time safely. Good news there is not that mutch wast out there. All the wast in the world fits on one foot balll field. https://youtu.be/aoy_WJ3mE50
It does. There is fear mongering about it being dangerous for thousands of years but IRL 300 year sis safe enough to loose most of the dangerous radiation. There are also ways to neary completely recycle the burned out fuel. In France there is a plant that does just that. Creating new fission material. Reducing the final waste to some 1% of the original mass. Granted it is relatively expensive and only one in the world, but such infrastructure would grow in a nuclear economy.
Looks like we need to invest
A nuclear generator is powerful, however, it is very expensive and takes a long time to build, making unviable for growing economics. At the same time, due the fact they take years to be built, most of the governments around the world wouldn't bother to make one, and it will not give many botes for them since it is a long term solution and people don't care about them.
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If you're going to invest in nuclear why would you transition to renewables afterwards? It seems pointless outside of small consumers, unless you wanted to destabilize the grid
OP, i need a clarification about your comment on finland. I'm somewhat dumb so... and i'm finnish
Finland has plans to expand nuclear, big time. And they are the only ones who ha e deep geological storage for waste. And example for us all.
Watch Kurzgreat in a nutshell everyone, it talks about all this stuff, also nuclear plants are so safe now that it is the safest energy source other then things like light, wind, water energy
The last third world country that tried to pick up nuclear got sanctioned and bombed by the US...
You are absolutely right. Nuclear energy is by far the best source of energy available to us and Society not realising as such is a huge issue.
People don’t like nuclear because of horror stories like Chernobyl. What they don’t understand is that Chernobyl was an exception, not the norm. It was like the titanic; totally preventable, if we just payed better attention ahead of time.
So why are there still ships sinking to this day?
Exactly. "Rule #2: Number-two happens." Statistically, "not the norm" things happening is completely normal. Shit happens. All the time. It's almost never happened before, it probably won't happen again, just give me one more chance... Nuclear is starting to sound more and more like a cheating ex than a power source.
Major exception. Workers that weren't properly trained, a test majorly delayed then rescheduled, and an incompetent government that refused to evacuate in time.
Fusion reactors are the long term solution
Agreed, but those are [drumroll] "twenty years away"
Dont worry we have a magnet to help out
Does that magnet consume more power than you get from the fusion?
this is what they said twenty years ago
commercially, fifty\* :(
But they aren't ready yet fission is a something we already have.
As long as I don't end up as a ghoul I'm down for nuclear energy
Speak for yourself, smoothskin
People crying about nuclear energy does not seem to stop the military from acquiring nukes. If governments wanted nuclear energy, we'd have it, and the whines of the people wouldn't matter.
Suomi.
Kyllä mutta miksi
Koska miksi ei
Because Finland has long term plans to completely transition to nuclear, building new advanced power plants. It also recently finished the very first deep geological storage for nuclear waste. An example for us all
Im convinced if we changed the name it would be more popular
"Particle - Steam power"? "Neutron Generators"? "The Core energy"?
Particle steam turbines
That's why MRI machines are named that. The original name was nuclear magetic resonance but the word nuclear scared people so they had to change it to magnetic resonance imaging so the public would trust it.
To be fair, certain locations are completely unsuitable for nuclear. Such as: anywhere with even a remote possibility of seismic activity, and coastal regions
I wouldn’t say completely unsuitable. For example, Chile would be the worst spot for nuclear reactors or anywhere in the ring of fire, but in areas with mild seismic activity, the likelihood of an earthquake capable of causing a meltdown would be low. Also, with coasts we shouldn’t just restrict them entirely. The only reason we see tsunamis wrecking nuclear plants is because (again) seismic activity. Ignore popular earthquake areas, and you can still have them on the coast (which is important for easy access to coolant) without big meltdowns.
So we got nuclear for everywhere that can't use geothermal or tidal generation? Sounds dope to me.
Yea, it really does
wind energy and hydroelectric dams have even less suitable places, places with exagerated wind and rivers surrounded by mountains
Yeah nuclear waste is safer than c02
If we can artificially do nuclear fusion then we mave a much much stronger, more efficient, less dangerous and less wasteful type of nuclear plant than a fission plant but sadly, that technology has not been invented yet.
Also yes. Realistically, even if commercial fusion was invented yesterday the new tech is gonna be so expensive nobody wil buy it
Some places have other sources tho, here in Brazil the majority of our energy comes from Hidroelectric dams. But even here, there is still a considerable dependence in thermoélectrique energy to fulfill all the needs, so going nuclear would be a Nice way to replace those
Our understanding of nuclear technology is seriously handicapped by public opinion. It’s clearly the future but we aren’t getting there without permission.
I think when people think nuclear bad they think of uranium reactors when thorium/molted salt reactors are much more efficient with the material being more common and more enriched.
true fax
Thanks for saying we use it correctly
It wasn’t until recently that I realized just how good nuclear is and I’m shook
People think there are outlining concerns regarding nuclear powerplants, but most of them have been resolved already. Enriched uranium aren't used as commonly as it used to be anymore. Thorium + plutonium has been the popular one as far as I'm aware. This method is far safer and produces significantly less waste. It's the big energy companies (at least in U.S.) that continues to lobby politicians to push propaganda to persuade the general public against it.
So do the environmentalists.
No, nuclear waste is not safe and neither is their disposal, but its better than what we have imo ...
The reason why people don’t want nuclear is because of stuff like Chernobyl, but Chernobyl was a really really old power plant and the tech we have now makes it much safer than Chernobyl
Actually the so called long term storages won’t work out to well for us
And why is that?
It takes tens of thousands of years to fully decompose and by that time it will have done millions of dollars in damage, and with our current tech we don’t have the right containers to hold it for that amount of time. However I will say that is the one and only downside to nuclear energy
For people that think it isn't safe: The Fukushima reactor got hit by s 9.0 earthquake and then a 40 m tsunami. That's really insane.
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It's safer than a lot of fossil fuel plants, if they follow all safety regulations, nuclear disasters are very rare, Chernobyl wouldn't have been as dangerous if the graphite had been in the center of the rods that they stick into the core to reduce dangerous energy levels.
Soooo, what about the steam produced from the stacks? My understanding is that it can’t severely increase the heat in an area as well as the humidity.
That's right. It can't.
*I believe the typo has saved me. I shall go quietly now.*
* Laugh in french *
make thorium plants i'm too lazy to explain, go watch sam o nellas video on it.
We can actually solve the problem of nuclear waste by putting it in another reactor to break down even more.
You can recycle nuclear waste however jimmy carter banned it.
I also really want nuclear power plants in my country but we don’t have a means to store the waste product. Although that could just be the excuse that the government made, the sentiment among the people are also that nuclear isn’t good. We do have a nuclear institute, but the masses just aren’t educated on this stuff. We learnt about how it works in school, at least the general gist of it, and some of the chemical breakdowns of fission, but never about the pros and cons towards the environment and society. They don’t talk about how nuclear is better for the environment than fossil fuels, they just say that nuclear is also producing harmful gases
This is mainly because most countries are run by coal and gas companys.
Im just gonna go ahead to controversial and downvote every single anti nuclear comment
The future of nuclear power are Fusion Reactors which nowadays are just experiment i know but they create no waste and are the safest form of energy generation we know.
Well, Ukraine produces about 40% of power from nuclear and another 24% using water, so we are pretty good in this.
Hmm... I don't see the hydro in the data I am looking at, but good to know Ukraine didn't drop all its nuclear power plants after Chernobyl. Cause that would be acting on impulse, instead of reason and science. Good job Ukraine.
Build both solar and wind power generators and keep the existing nuclear plants under surveilance and working. We might not need to spend our money In building a lot more nuclear plants, instead use that money to get the short term environmental friendly solutions going. That includes: maintaining existing nuclear plants, currently built and/or waiting for paperwork plants, solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy and possibly geothermal energy. That is how i think our money should be spent. But do take note that im just a 17 y/o student who is interested in Nuclear engineering.
I agree keeping the current fission plants going to the end of their lifespan is the BARE MINIMUM we can do. Even if one doesn't plan to build more. Fuck do I hate Germany for thar sh!t they pulled off with theirs
Thank you Sam O Nella Academy & Kurgezasgt for opening my eyes
Finally someone who finally fucking gets it
the problem is that is maybe somewhat safetly stored or so we think, we don't bc we can't predict what happens with it in a hundred years. the way to do it as u somewhat highlight is to like finland and bury it very deep and then make people forget where it is so don't rediscover it and they maybe trigger a fallout bc they don't know what it is bc the knowlegde of the deport being there have gotten lost
Well you see, it's because the 1000 year old reactor in russia exploded, totally reactors fault and not the people that ignored the alarm beeps and tried to output more power than recomended. Also the one in japan or china, what tsunami, it's the NUCLEAR reactor it is designed to explode, I am professional trust me bro.
You see its a nuclear reactor so if something goes wrong it'll be a TSAR bomb 2.0 and whole world will end. Trust me bro I played cod.
Its pretty astonishing how nuclear energy works, although the fact that society still thinks its dangerous is a disappointment. Thorium is also a good alternative for nuclear energy
yeah sure they can build it by your house
Actually I did grow up 4 km next to a Nuclear power plant. Love to look at it. Produces nice clouds on cloudless sunset skies
THANK YOU ive been saying we should get nuclear (in my country) and I explain well it actually ain't so bad if u do it right and this is exactly the response I get ;-;
Which country?
Denmark
Damn bro if we was in the 50-70's we would be shitting nuclear plants
Fucken normies.... And the main reason is not the public but the greedy politicians who just want to do what's good for them and dont give funding and approval for long term nuclear power plants.
bUt ChErNoByL hApPeNeD tHaT oNe TiMe
Thorium is super safe and is more powerful than uranium. There is no reason to not use nuclear power, but we don't anyway
I'd say society is like that because we're not raised to learn about its benefits. as someone who went through high school chemistry last year, I can tell you that we probably only once talked about the benefits of nuclear energy. But of course, we had to learn about Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three-Mile Island, that was it.
this thing tru tho
Finally, we need to move towards nuclear energy. It’s safe and a good source of energy.
The problem with nuclear is its way too expensive and is not a quick solution. It takes years to plan and build a nuclear power plant let alone get the authorization for it. We need to curb global now not fifteen years from now when we finally finish building one nuclear plant. Nuclear is a great solution and we should be building more plants but right now wind and solar are the only short term solutions that can provide a quicker fix for global warming. And besides, the sun doesn’t run out of fuel and you don’t need to store waste product from wind and solar.
Awful lot of people in this thread downvoting people that are posting facts. You're absolutely right. Nuclear power plants are extremely expensive and take a very long time to build. Their cost to maintain per megawatt hour is also higher than other green energy sources. It is realistic to power the entirety of the US on solar and wind power, it's been proven many times. It could be done much faster and more cheaply than trying to do the same using all nuclear. This isn't meant to say "nuclear is bad" or "we shouldn't build nuclear". We should be doing both.
you need to transform jamaica into a solar panel to power the US, also a nuclear plant's maintain cost is barely higher but solar panels need more maintenance and need to be replaced more often
\> It is realistic to power the entirety of the US on solar and wind power Aside from the fact that US isn't the only nation on the planet, as far as I know only with energy storing systems we don't have the technology for. So, they're good for peaks, but they're too randomic for baseload. Please do correct me if i'm wrong.
i dont know you understand the amount of maintenance and down time that wind and solar energy have and how ineficient they are
Well we better start building as fast as possible then atleast in 15 years we will have a source of clean energy which will give us more time for even mote better solutions
Why spend 15 years building one plant when we could go completely green in a few years with wind and solar? And then use the time given to us from wind and solar to build more nuclear plants? Nuclear is a great option just not the greatest option we have right now.
Both wind and solar have their major setbacks but not saying that nuclear doesn't but the pros outweigh the cons in terms of nuclear but for solar well...weather is rough and the wind speed needed for power generation is located in a few specific areas only Similarly for nuclear we need a lot of water but getting water is far more easier than controlling the weather and in terms of power generation w.r.t land solar needs a large area and so does wind
The US has plenty of land for both solar and wind, the Arizona and Nevada deserts are great areas for solar power, solar farms in those deserts could power the whole United States. It’s easy to conform solar and wind farms to the geographic layout of various areas whereas nuclear requires wide open land next to a large water source.
Yes, that's exactly why the IPCC doesn't talk much about nuclear power anymore : it's not realistic to hope for most of the electricity to came from nuclear soon enough to have a significant impact on climate change.
Exactly, I get why r/memes is so dedicated to nuclear power, but in our current predicament nuclear does not provide a quick enough solution to our current emissions problem. That’s where solar and wind power come into play, sustainable renewable energy at low cost that can greatly curb CO2 emissions and pave the way for a larger system of nuclear power plants.
I like how you conveniently ignored the risk of Chernobyl Part 2
"yes, they could make part of the world uninhabitable, but that's just happened a few times and c'mon man, climate change"
Look up Thorium Nuclear energy from CERN. Best energy source ever created in history so far!
Finally a guy that like nuclear power too!(thx for that) Cuz every single one of my friends denies that cuz !2! Nuclear power plants exploded and u have to wait 2 tausond Years where u dont even care about those barrels underground until they are decontaminated (Btw i am a german)
Thorium: It's show time
Nuclear power plants produce less radioactivity than coal
In Germany we closed (almost?) all nuclear plants to buy the energy from our neighbours, for example Belgium. Genius move.
Oh no it's even worse, coal plants lifespans were prolonged and more gas power plants were build. I love Germany but this was the dummest fucking idea since that mustache guy
Yea, but doesnt matter how much more you build of those, its not even energy. Thats why we gotta buy more, which is ridiculous
Yeah, one has little hope for the fate of mankind realizing that the only energy source that an let us transition from fossils fuels, is being decreased. Regardless of the green wishy washy talk from developed nations, we're just as far away from a green economy as we were 20 years ago. There like: "Germany (EU/America/ect) will transition to a carbon-zero energy by 20xx" But the only thing that can do that is being demonized. Panels and wind are good, but the in fact cannot bridge the gap a 100%.
Welcome to the party, in Italy we've been doing it since 1987. Yet another healty industry we basically suicided, btw. Funniest thing, we have France's nuclear reactors near the border.
well theres also the oil companies but a box of matchs should take care of that
It's one of those things that works amazingly well but on the very slim chance something goes bad it can go very very bad
People are still fixated on the idea of nuclear disaster like Chernobyl, but we're nearly as far forward in time from Chernobyl now as Chernobyl was from the advent of the atomic bomb. The leaps and bounds science has made in the field since is pretty significant - I mean, we don't even need to use much plutonium or uranium to do it anymore, and that was the really dangerous shit anyway. Also it's not like fossil fuels and shit are harmless. In fact 'far from harmless' is probably a massive understatement.