4 ms·

Everything has pro and cons. Windmills have just a few cons like don't block the air space (bad for a few birds (but less bad than water power plans for fish),

• jimmaswell 10y ago
  And nuclear is in an even more eco-friendly category than those. This seems accurate: http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear-energy-vs-wind-and-solar/ http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear...
  • Klinky 10y ago
    Isn't the AP-1000 reactor he is citing about to cause the downfall of Westinghouse and Toshiba due to extreme cost overruns? Upfront cost, liability and waste disposable with nuclear cannot be overlooked. He also noted: > A reactor has a 60-year service life. Fukushima suggests otherwise. Holding on to old reactor designs has resulted in catastrophic failures.
    • jimmaswell 10y ago
      From what I've heard, these cost overruns are due to political causes. Waste disposal is a non issue, and Fukashima was due to terrible planning. It wouldn't be solar's fault if someone put too many solar panels on a weak roof and they fell through.
      • mambodog 10y ago
        Humans have shown time and time again we cannot be trusted to consistently do things right, so the likely outcomes of some realistic percentage of 'terrible planning', as you put it, should be part of any comparison of power generation techniques. The analogy you make to solar ignores that the failure modes of nuclear are much worse than solar.
        • jimmaswell 10y ago
          From the page I found, "more Americans have died from installing rooftop solar than have ever died from the construction or use of American nuclear power plants". On average, nuclear is safer. The likelihood of another Fukashima is even lower now that it's happened and been documented.
          • mambodog 10y ago
            I think you mean 'on average, nuclear is safer than rooftop solar'. How about nuclear vs. large scale solar? Large scale solar + wind? These are more realistic equivalents to nuclear.
            • jimmaswell 10y ago
              This still seems to just mention rooftop but it's still telling how far US nuclear is below its next runner up, Hydro - .1 to 5 deaths/trillion kWh
              • jimmaswell 10y ago
                Meant to link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#2f56e537709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
          • rawrRAWR 10y ago
            This can quickly change, when one terrorist attack happens on a single nuclear plant. Not so much with wind or solar, though ;)
            • jimmaswell 10y ago
              From what I'm seeing in this PDF, it's not that much of a concern. http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/34/066/34066699.pdf http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Publ...
          • 10y ago
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • rawrRAWR 10y ago
        Waste disposal is an issue for millions of years to come.
      • anarazel 10y ago
        > Waste disposal is a non issue, Sorry, but that's just a ridiculous position. You can argue that it's a soluble issue, that the long-term hazard and security are manageable and affordable. You need storage that's going to stable over 10s of thousands of years, that will need to be protected for the foreseeable future (unless you want people to have plenty material for dirty bombs etc). That's not cheap, and the is cost that's very likely going to be externalized from the company running atomic plants, since there's obviously no guarantee said company is going to stick around for long enough. I am perceiving an uptick in lay-people (more or less) advocating for fission power generation over the last 2-3 years. There are some good arguments. But in nearly all cases I end up being unconvinced because all the problems (waste, complexity, massive delays, security) are just waved away with arguments like "waste disposal is a non-issue", "cost overruns are due to political causes", "new reactor designs make the risks infinitesimally small", .... It's obviously a complex problem and just deflecting away the problems that have bogged nuclear power in a lot of quite different countries, isn't convincing unless you're already convinced.
• ghaff 10y ago
  >water/hydro As you suggest in your prior sentence, hydro is very disruptive environmentally in some cases. The Glen Canyon Dam (and the once proposed dams in the Grand Canyon) are particular cases in point. There's a general trend toward removing old dams in New England in part because of their environmental impact. Of course, small scale hydro like microturbines is far less disruptive but it generates far less power.
  • heisenbit 10y ago
    Don't count hydro out as part of the energy mix. It can complement PV as a reasonably efficient energy store.
• jnordwick 10y ago
  Dams are usually ecological disasters. The Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed up and it destroyed a natural resource on par with Yosemite. People have been trying to remove it for years, but the San Francisco residents refuse to let it go since it supplies such a large amount of power to them.
  • djrogers 10y ago
    Not to mention it supplies their water