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True, but nuclear energy has two important benefits. It has a stable output (so you don't have to invest in energy storage) and it takes up much less space (so
by RivieraKid 9y ago
True, but nuclear energy has two important benefits. It has a stable output (so you don't have to invest in energy storage) and it takes up much less space (so it doesn't visually disrupt the landscape as much).
- olau 9y agoDemand is not stable so you still need energy storage or something else to fill the peaks. The only alternative is not running the plant at full capacity, which will make it even more expensive. Less space: that's true. But you still need a fair bit of space to the nearest city. :)
- RivieraKid 9y agoYeah, but with nuclear you only have to deal with demand variability, not supply variability.
- Caveman_Coder 9y agoThat is not "the only alternative" in practice. If you're in a market (which most companies owning nuclear generation are) you'd sell your excess energy, you wouldn't lower the output of your nuclear generation resources.
- pjc50 9y agoUnless the 1/1000 failure event happens and all the land for miles around is rendered uninhabitable and unfarmable.
- eru 9y agoWe could have many, many more Chernobyl and Fukushima style disasters, and nuclear would still be safer than real-world coal. (But that's an easy target to beat.)
- RivieraKid 9y agoIn modern nuclear reactors, safety is not an issue.
- chefkoch 9y ago"In modern nuclear reactors, safety is not an issue." Russian nuclear engineer, 1985
- eropple 9y agoGiven that the Chernobyl disaster can be traced to intentional disabling of safety systems to see what would happen, this is lousy, disingenuous snark. (For those not so afflicted, "Normal Accidents" has an awesome treatment of the Chernobyl disaster.)
- chefkoch 9y agoSo intentional circumventing of safety measures and (cost) cutting corners is not possible sich the new tech? Almost in every industry i can think of there are countless examples of how profit is traded for safety. Why should this be any different?
- guscost 9y agoSafety measures which cannot be intentionally circumvented (except by planting a bomb, I suppose) predate Chernobyl by many years. The RBMK was a horrible design which threw away passive safety[0] for convenience and cost savings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety
- dsfyu404ed 9y agox2. Modern designs for things that can fail dangerously incorporate features that cause the system to go down a branch that ends in a safe failure mode high up the tree rather than allowing the possibility of a less safe failure many more steps down the tree. It's like how Uhaul overbuilds the living crap out of it's trailers then puts relatively (compared to the rest of the system) light duty tires on them. Better to have idiots blow out tires than other less safe failure modes.
- DiThi 9y agoAll failure events happened due to incompetence and/or greed, and increasingly unlikely due to new designs and improved protocols. And even assuming those accidents are unavoidable, coal still produces more health problems and deaths.
- pjc50 9y agoI'm glad we've abolished greed and incompetence in this future world. (I'm also not sure why so many people are playing the nuclear/coal dichotomy when we got into this discussion from wind power and the default backup for renewables is now CCGT?)
- RivieraKid 9y agoThe situation is completely different now. Reactor design is much safer, operational safety is at another level and safety risks are more clearly understood.
- adrianN 9y agoWe have had six nuclear accidents with more than local effects in the last sixty years, with hundreds of reactors running. None of them could have happened with modern designs.