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If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue. Solar power is only just now catching up to cost effectiveness with nuclear. And on

If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue. Solar power is only just now catching up to cost effectiveness with nuclear. And only on sunny days, the storage problem is very far away from being solved. Maybe coal is cheaper, but only if you exclude externalities. The amount of radiation released by nuclear is tiny compared to coal. Not to mention mercury, carbon dioxide, etc.

addicted 9y ago
The only reason nuclear is even viable today is because nuclear technokogy isn't as bad today as it was a few decades ago. Every time we have a massive nuclear disaster the defense (a valid one!) Is that the disaster happened from a poorer technology that isn't used anymore today. If we had built out nuclear earlier we would have had a lot more nuclear disasters. The problem with nuclear is solely that by the time the technology became good enough that it could be used fairly safely it became way more expensive than almost all competitors including most other renewable sources. And this is even before including the geopolitical limitations of nuclear. Would we be living in a better world if every country including countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan had easy access to nuclear.
- yeellow 9y ago
  Pakistan has nuclear weapon and 4 nuclear power plants.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't regulatory burden a significant reason for nuclear being so expensive? As of May 2017, the People's Republic of China has 37 nuclear reactors operating with a capacity of 32.4 GW and 20 under construction with a capacity of 20.5 GW.[1] Compare: As of 2016, there are four new reactors under construction with a gross electrical capacity of 5,000 MW, while 33 reactors have been permanently shut down. I'm lead to believe the reason China can have 5 times the number of new nuclear builds is because China seems to be able to get shit done while infrastructure in the US languishes. I could be wrong, I'm just going by what internet would have me believe. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
freeflight 9y ago
>If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue. Then we would have even more problems with final disposal than we already have, that's the topic none of the pro-nuclear people ever want to touch on because they fully realize it's quite an issue. As is, it's already bad enough how plant operators socialize these long-term costs while keeping all the profits private, which is the only way these operations can turn a short-term profit. Case in point: http://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-deal-with-energy-companies/a-36089376 http://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-de... It's even more infuriating to see that quote of Sigmar Gabrial boasting that "society alone doesn't have to bear the costs". How generous of them to pay a little bit into a fund for the disposal of their own waste, while the German taxpayer will end up picking the brunt of the bill when, as always, everything ends up going way over the estimated costs. Just take a look at Fukushima: TEPCO has a book equity of $US20 billion, total cleanup costs are estimated at $US250 billion, who's paying for that? Right, the Japanese government aka the tax payer.
- catdog 9y ago
  Another problem with going fully nuclear: society is going to be highly dependent on basically a hand full of reactors so it's not that easy to shut them down in case unexpected defects are found or if they simply get too old without newer ones being built in time. We see this e.g. in France which largely runs on nuclear power: they still operate some old reactors with serious known issues. There also were some winters in the recent years where their grid was close to a blackout because a substantial part of the nuclear plants where in maintenance mode and electrical heating is widely used. It is only possible to prevent this because neighboring countries like Germany are able to reliably produce a lot of excess electricity (still too much coal unfortunately, thanks Merkel :() which they can import.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  Even despite that, it's still better than coal. The costs are just more concentrated, and therefore more apparent. But the fact it's concentrated also make it at least possible to contain and cleanup. No one would even attempt to cleanup the environmental damage caused by coal, and it would cost vastly more than hundreds of billions. The estimated deaths are much larger than from nuclear accidents. If we had invested more in Nuclear it would be less of an issue. We've invented much safer reactors, and more efficient ones that produce much less waste. Probably much more would have been developed if the investment was there.
verelo 9y ago
>> "Maybe coal is cheaper" Many make this claim, but I do not buy it. Take Australia as an example: relies on coal for around 85% of electricity production [1], also has some of the most expensive electricity in the western world [2] at around 29c / USD Kilowatt hour (that is over 2x the US national average). [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070709212140/http://www.iea.org/dbtw-wpd/Textbase/nppdf/free/2006/key2006.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20070709212140/http://www.iea.or... [2] https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity-prices-kwh.html https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-elect...
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  Until Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and The Wilderness Society come out and publicly claim responsibility for the mess Australia's electricity generation is I won't take "Environmentalism" seriously. I live in Tasmania now, I think most of our electricity comes from hydro. Thirty hydropower stations operating in Tasmania[1], but we still pay ~26 cents a kilowatt-hour here. 1. https://www.hydro.com.au/energy/our-power-stations https://www.hydro.com.au/energy/our-power-stations
  - verelo 9y ago
    Curious, what did (or didn't) those organizations do? I donate to some of them and would gladly change that by donating elsewhere if there is good reason not to. Also, agreed. Australia is a mess. I grew up in Newcastle, living in Toronto Canada now and love looking at where our energy comes from: https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricity.html https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelect... No coal, beautiful!
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      Generally campaign hard against nuclear and hydro. There hasn't been any new hydro in Australia since The Wilderness Society blocked the Franklin Dam project[1]. I'll admit that no new hydro is arguably a good thing for certain aspects of sustainability, but it could be argued that new hydro is better than new coal or gas. That's sort of a false dichotomy because there are other options: An in-principle agreement has been reached to build a new 144MW wind farm in central Tasmania[2], the first new wind project in the state in almost a decade[3]. The Franklin Dam project was to be 180MW, with arguable much greater capacity factor than wind. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy 2. http://www.goldwindaustralia.com/aurora-energy-goldwind-announces-agreement-wild-cattle-hill-wind-farm/ http://www.goldwindaustralia.com/aurora-energy-goldwind-anno... 3. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-07/new-$300m-wind-farm-for-tasmania/8594910 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-07/new-$300m-wind-farm-fo...

addicted 9y ago

The only reason nuclear is even viable today is because nuclear technokogy isn't as bad today as it was a few decades ago. Every time we have a massive nuclear disaster the defense (a valid one!) Is that the disaster happened from a poorer technology that isn't used anymore today. If we had built out nuclear earlier we would have had a lot more nuclear disasters. The problem with nuclear is solely that by the time the technology became good enough that it could be used fairly safely it became way more expensive than almost all competitors including most other renewable sources. And this is even before including the geopolitical limitations of nuclear. Would we be living in a better world if every country including countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan had easy access to nuclear.

yeellow 9y ago
Pakistan has nuclear weapon and 4 nuclear power plants.
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't regulatory burden a significant reason for nuclear being so expensive? As of May 2017, the People's Republic of China has 37 nuclear reactors operating with a capacity of 32.4 GW and 20 under construction with a capacity of 20.5 GW.[1] Compare: As of 2016, there are four new reactors under construction with a gross electrical capacity of 5,000 MW, while 33 reactors have been permanently shut down. I'm lead to believe the reason China can have 5 times the number of new nuclear builds is because China seems to be able to get shit done while infrastructure in the US languishes. I could be wrong, I'm just going by what internet would have me believe. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...

freeflight 9y ago

>If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue. Then we would have even more problems with final disposal than we already have, that's the topic none of the pro-nuclear people ever want to touch on because they fully realize it's quite an issue. As is, it's already bad enough how plant operators socialize these long-term costs while keeping all the profits private, which is the only way these operations can turn a short-term profit. Case in point: http://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-deal-with-energy-companies/a-36089376 http://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-de... It's even more infuriating to see that quote of Sigmar Gabrial boasting that "society alone doesn't have to bear the costs". How generous of them to pay a little bit into a fund for the disposal of their own waste, while the German taxpayer will end up picking the brunt of the bill when, as always, everything ends up going way over the estimated costs. Just take a look at Fukushima: TEPCO has a book equity of $US20 billion, total cleanup costs are estimated at $US250 billion, who's paying for that? Right, the Japanese government aka the tax payer.

catdog 9y ago
Another problem with going fully nuclear: society is going to be highly dependent on basically a hand full of reactors so it's not that easy to shut them down in case unexpected defects are found or if they simply get too old without newer ones being built in time. We see this e.g. in France which largely runs on nuclear power: they still operate some old reactors with serious known issues. There also were some winters in the recent years where their grid was close to a blackout because a substantial part of the nuclear plants where in maintenance mode and electrical heating is widely used. It is only possible to prevent this because neighboring countries like Germany are able to reliably produce a lot of excess electricity (still too much coal unfortunately, thanks Merkel :() which they can import.
Houshalter 9y ago
Even despite that, it's still better than coal. The costs are just more concentrated, and therefore more apparent. But the fact it's concentrated also make it at least possible to contain and cleanup. No one would even attempt to cleanup the environmental damage caused by coal, and it would cost vastly more than hundreds of billions. The estimated deaths are much larger than from nuclear accidents. If we had invested more in Nuclear it would be less of an issue. We've invented much safer reactors, and more efficient ones that produce much less waste. Probably much more would have been developed if the investment was there.

verelo 9y ago

>> "Maybe coal is cheaper" Many make this claim, but I do not buy it. Take Australia as an example: relies on coal for around 85% of electricity production [1], also has some of the most expensive electricity in the western world [2] at around 29c / USD Kilowatt hour (that is over 2x the US national average). [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070709212140/http://www.iea.org/dbtw-wpd/Textbase/nppdf/free/2006/key2006.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20070709212140/http://www.iea.or... [2] https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity-prices-kwh.html https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-elect...

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
Until Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and The Wilderness Society come out and publicly claim responsibility for the mess Australia's electricity generation is I won't take "Environmentalism" seriously. I live in Tasmania now, I think most of our electricity comes from hydro. Thirty hydropower stations operating in Tasmania[1], but we still pay ~26 cents a kilowatt-hour here. 1. https://www.hydro.com.au/energy/our-power-stations https://www.hydro.com.au/energy/our-power-stations
- verelo 9y ago
  Curious, what did (or didn't) those organizations do? I donate to some of them and would gladly change that by donating elsewhere if there is good reason not to. Also, agreed. Australia is a mess. I grew up in Newcastle, living in Toronto Canada now and love looking at where our energy comes from: https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricity.html https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelect... No coal, beautiful!
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    Generally campaign hard against nuclear and hydro. There hasn't been any new hydro in Australia since The Wilderness Society blocked the Franklin Dam project[1]. I'll admit that no new hydro is arguably a good thing for certain aspects of sustainability, but it could be argued that new hydro is better than new coal or gas. That's sort of a false dichotomy because there are other options: An in-principle agreement has been reached to build a new 144MW wind farm in central Tasmania[2], the first new wind project in the state in almost a decade[3]. The Franklin Dam project was to be 180MW, with arguable much greater capacity factor than wind. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy 2. http://www.goldwindaustralia.com/aurora-energy-goldwind-announces-agreement-wild-cattle-hill-wind-farm/ http://www.goldwindaustralia.com/aurora-energy-goldwind-anno... 3. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-07/new-$300m-wind-farm-for-tasmania/8594910 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-07/new-$300m-wind-farm-fo...