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>> Nuclear is considered valuable because it's a zero-emissions energy source (...) Unless we're planning on using magic to obtain the fuel, build the power st

>> Nuclear is considered valuable because it's a zero-emissions energy source (...) Unless we're planning on using magic to obtain the fuel, build the power stations, reprocess spent fuel, and decommission the power stations when they're done, that claim would appear to be false.

MorrisofOrange 8y ago
By that same logic, solar and wind aren't zero emission energy sources either...
- logifail 8y ago
  The article doesn't make any claims about "zero emissions" of solar and wind, yet it does about nuclear. Maybe a fair comparison of lifetime emissions for each source would be appropriate?
- jMyles 8y ago
  That's right, they aren't. Now, let's have a reasonable dialogue about the consequences of uranium mining vs the supply chain for materials for wind and solar. All of these technologies are zero-on-site emissions, and that's a useful distinction of course (compared to coal). But of course we still need to consider the externalities of the rest of the process.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Not just supply side. Decom of old wind units is difficult, and they are mostly non-biodegrading fiberglass, carbon fiber, and polyester and epoxy resins, apart from their easily recycled metal bits. So far, we are trying to repurpose them, but its not a great solution. We can only use so many turbine blade park benches. Personally, I think we will look back on wind power as a curious mistake, in comparison to solar farms and nuclear.
    - jMyles 8y ago
      > So far, we are trying to repurpose them, but its not a great solution. We can only use so many turbine blade park benches. Very interesting. I didn't realize this - thanks for bringing it to my attention. Do you happen to have a link handy where I can learn more about these sorts of efforts?
    - runarberg 8y ago
      Is it weird to note the difficulties of decommissioning windmills, and then advocate for nuclear power plants?
  - 08-15 8y ago
    You just shifted the goal posts from power inputs to raw materials, but whatever. Let's have a discussion about production of rare earth elements vs. in-situ leaching of uranium.
  - nickik 8y ago
    Ok. Lets have reasonable idalogue. The facts are quite simply that nuclear uses the least amount of materials and has the lowest overall resource consumption. Uranium is mined threw one hole in the ground and is much cleaner and less destractive then virtually all other forms of mining. Furthermore you only need tiny amounts because the the energy density. The mining required for solar and wind is larger by orders of magnitude. The same goes for land use. Nuclear has a minuscule land use impact. On carbon solar, wind and nuclear are all so much better that it hardly matters and calculations become way to specific about what was transported where and so on. Nuclear pays for the decommissioning and for the waste. The 'waste' is all captures and does not harm anybody (not even animals). Compared to the waste form solar and wind that is not properly accounted for in most of the world. So nuclear is overall has the smallest environmental impact.
BeniBoy 8y ago
Here are the numbers[1]. TLDR: Wind onshore emits a pinch less than nuclear (11 vs 12 gCO2eq/kWh) but far from the 820 gCO2eq/kWh of Coal. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emis...
- logifail 8y ago
  Here are some alternative numbers (apparently with a lot more references): "The first conclusion is that the mean value of emissions over the course of the lifetime of a nuclear reactor (reported from qualified studies) is 66 g CO2e/kWh, due to reliance on existing fossil-fuel infrastructure for plant construction, decommissioning, and fuel processing along with the energy intensity of uranium mining and enrichment. Thus, nuclear energy is in no way ‘‘carbon free’’ or ‘‘emissions free,’’ even though it is much better (from purely a carbon-equivalent emissions standpoint) than coal, oil, and natural gas electricity generators" http://www.grid.unep.ch/FP2011/step1/pdf/003_Sovacool_2008.pdf http://www.grid.unep.ch/FP2011/step1/pdf/003_Sovacool_2008.p...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomp 8y ago
    This is an empty argument; obviously nothing can be emission-free for as long as we run our cars, planes and ships on (non-captured-CO2) carbon fuels; but if the source of our energy is net emission-free (i.e. if you used the energy to build and decomission plants and mine and process nuclear fuel, you'd still have energy left over), then we can slowly move the rest of the society over to electricity as well. Without "almost-but-not-really-emission-free" power sources, that's simply something we cannot do.
    - 08-15 8y ago
      Nuclear power is actually free of CO2 emissions. It's easy to see: one could use the electricity to make synthetic fuels from air and water. (Capture of CO2 sounds like a difficult problem, but ammonia and hydrazine would definitely work.) If the supply chain uses synfuels, nuclear power is emission free. However, as long as a coal fired power plant is operating somewhere, you achieve a better result by using fossil fuels for the supply chain, feeding the electricity into the grid and saving more CO2 emissions elsewhere. By the way, Sovacool's basic argument is that nuclear isn't CO2 free because the grid isn't nuclear enough. Something along the lines of "if we built more nuclear plants, we'd have to build more old enrichment plants and more coal plants to power them". In other words, he's too stupid or too crooked to correctly compute total derivatives.
XorNot 8y ago
I am completely content ignoring all those emissions because they're a product of engine-technology (ICE) and not intrinsic to the process. A nuclear-power plant feeding energy to a grid which powered electrified trains, cars and trucks would be zero emission.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  And you can also power fuel extraction, refining and reprocessing.
  - fastball 8y ago
    Why couldn't those processes be electrically powered?
    - hwillis 8y ago
      In fact they are, in large part- uranium is shaft mined and electric machinery is massively preferred to combustion for air quality reasons. The dump trucks outside the mine are diesel, but even that is changing[1]. Pretty funny- there are a number of mines where electric dump trucks actually produce energy on net! Anywhere you go down in elevation as you come out of the mine area, the extra weight as you're loaded can power the trip back up. [1]: https://www.constructionjunkie.com/blog/2017/9/21/worlds-largest-battery-powered-dump-truck-is-being-developed https://www.constructionjunkie.com/blog/2017/9/21/worlds-lar...
      - rbanffy 8y ago
        > Pretty funny- there are a number of mines where electric dump trucks actually produce energy on net! Anywhere you go down in elevation as you come out of the mine area, the extra weight as you're loaded can power the trip back up. This is pretty wild, but makes perfect sense.

MorrisofOrange 8y ago

By that same logic, solar and wind aren't zero emission energy sources either...

logifail 8y ago
The article doesn't make any claims about "zero emissions" of solar and wind, yet it does about nuclear. Maybe a fair comparison of lifetime emissions for each source would be appropriate?
jMyles 8y ago
That's right, they aren't. Now, let's have a reasonable dialogue about the consequences of uranium mining vs the supply chain for materials for wind and solar. All of these technologies are zero-on-site emissions, and that's a useful distinction of course (compared to coal). But of course we still need to consider the externalities of the rest of the process.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Not just supply side. Decom of old wind units is difficult, and they are mostly non-biodegrading fiberglass, carbon fiber, and polyester and epoxy resins, apart from their easily recycled metal bits. So far, we are trying to repurpose them, but its not a great solution. We can only use so many turbine blade park benches. Personally, I think we will look back on wind power as a curious mistake, in comparison to solar farms and nuclear.
  - jMyles 8y ago
    > So far, we are trying to repurpose them, but its not a great solution. We can only use so many turbine blade park benches. Very interesting. I didn't realize this - thanks for bringing it to my attention. Do you happen to have a link handy where I can learn more about these sorts of efforts?
  - runarberg 8y ago
    Is it weird to note the difficulties of decommissioning windmills, and then advocate for nuclear power plants?
- 08-15 8y ago
  You just shifted the goal posts from power inputs to raw materials, but whatever. Let's have a discussion about production of rare earth elements vs. in-situ leaching of uranium.
- nickik 8y ago
  Ok. Lets have reasonable idalogue. The facts are quite simply that nuclear uses the least amount of materials and has the lowest overall resource consumption. Uranium is mined threw one hole in the ground and is much cleaner and less destractive then virtually all other forms of mining. Furthermore you only need tiny amounts because the the energy density. The mining required for solar and wind is larger by orders of magnitude. The same goes for land use. Nuclear has a minuscule land use impact. On carbon solar, wind and nuclear are all so much better that it hardly matters and calculations become way to specific about what was transported where and so on. Nuclear pays for the decommissioning and for the waste. The 'waste' is all captures and does not harm anybody (not even animals). Compared to the waste form solar and wind that is not properly accounted for in most of the world. So nuclear is overall has the smallest environmental impact.

BeniBoy 8y ago

Here are the numbers[1]. TLDR: Wind onshore emits a pinch less than nuclear (11 vs 12 gCO2eq/kWh) but far from the 820 gCO2eq/kWh of Coal. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emis...

logifail 8y ago
Here are some alternative numbers (apparently with a lot more references): "The first conclusion is that the mean value of emissions over the course of the lifetime of a nuclear reactor (reported from qualified studies) is 66 g CO2e/kWh, due to reliance on existing fossil-fuel infrastructure for plant construction, decommissioning, and fuel processing along with the energy intensity of uranium mining and enrichment. Thus, nuclear energy is in no way ‘‘carbon free’’ or ‘‘emissions free,’’ even though it is much better (from purely a carbon-equivalent emissions standpoint) than coal, oil, and natural gas electricity generators" http://www.grid.unep.ch/FP2011/step1/pdf/003_Sovacool_2008.pdf http://www.grid.unep.ch/FP2011/step1/pdf/003_Sovacool_2008.p...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tomp 8y ago
  This is an empty argument; obviously nothing can be emission-free for as long as we run our cars, planes and ships on (non-captured-CO2) carbon fuels; but if the source of our energy is net emission-free (i.e. if you used the energy to build and decomission plants and mine and process nuclear fuel, you'd still have energy left over), then we can slowly move the rest of the society over to electricity as well. Without "almost-but-not-really-emission-free" power sources, that's simply something we cannot do.
  - 08-15 8y ago
    Nuclear power is actually free of CO2 emissions. It's easy to see: one could use the electricity to make synthetic fuels from air and water. (Capture of CO2 sounds like a difficult problem, but ammonia and hydrazine would definitely work.) If the supply chain uses synfuels, nuclear power is emission free. However, as long as a coal fired power plant is operating somewhere, you achieve a better result by using fossil fuels for the supply chain, feeding the electricity into the grid and saving more CO2 emissions elsewhere. By the way, Sovacool's basic argument is that nuclear isn't CO2 free because the grid isn't nuclear enough. Something along the lines of "if we built more nuclear plants, we'd have to build more old enrichment plants and more coal plants to power them". In other words, he's too stupid or too crooked to correctly compute total derivatives.

XorNot 8y ago

I am completely content ignoring all those emissions because they're a product of engine-technology (ICE) and not intrinsic to the process. A nuclear-power plant feeding energy to a grid which powered electrified trains, cars and trucks would be zero emission.

rbanffy 8y ago
And you can also power fuel extraction, refining and reprocessing.
- fastball 8y ago
  Why couldn't those processes be electrically powered?
  - hwillis 8y ago
    In fact they are, in large part- uranium is shaft mined and electric machinery is massively preferred to combustion for air quality reasons. The dump trucks outside the mine are diesel, but even that is changing[1]. Pretty funny- there are a number of mines where electric dump trucks actually produce energy on net! Anywhere you go down in elevation as you come out of the mine area, the extra weight as you're loaded can power the trip back up. [1]: https://www.constructionjunkie.com/blog/2017/9/21/worlds-largest-battery-powered-dump-truck-is-being-developed https://www.constructionjunkie.com/blog/2017/9/21/worlds-lar...
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      > Pretty funny- there are a number of mines where electric dump trucks actually produce energy on net! Anywhere you go down in elevation as you come out of the mine area, the extra weight as you're loaded can power the trip back up. This is pretty wild, but makes perfect sense.