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Seems silly you were downvoted without being responded to. But I do believe you are misinterpreting/misstating facts. If you take into account externalities, fi

Seems silly you were downvoted without being responded to. But I do believe you are misinterpreting/misstating facts. If you take into account externalities, fission is cleaner and kills fewer people than other renewables (and both are much better than fossil fuel). This is true even after including the grossly incompetent (but thankfully rare) disasters in the history of nuclear energy. There are a couple of research paper references that always pop up in conversations like this about deaths per MWhour for each type. Even storage of waste is a solved problem: bury it in dry old mines in seismically dead locations, or start moving to the known novel reactor types. Politically, the issue is much different though...

Retric 8y ago
Costs are the real issue not worker safety. The trucking industry kills lots of people and nobody saftyreally cares. So, it’s really a straw man argument about non issues. Really, I would have no problem with Nuclear if it was cheap, but nobody can get it to be cheap (not even China) even without the need to load follow. We need cheap power and supplemental load following / storage. But, Nuclear is simply well behind the curve on both sides of the equation. Safe, stead production at 4c/kWh without subsidies would be a game changer or load following at much higher prices. Now, if the economics looked great then sure, but this stuff is all about minor improvements that don’t really change the game.
- krastanov 8y ago
  Skimming the first Google result for amortized cost, nuclear seems cheap: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/electric-generating-costs-a-primer/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/electri... However, I do not have good enough background to vet the source well. Are they missing something obvious? Also, I was not talking about worker safety, rater about everyone's health, from the miner to the person living near the power plant.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    Were you looking at production costs instead of levelized costs? That page notes "A new nuclear power plant, for example, has one of the highest levelized costs, particularly compared to coal and natural gas-fired plants, and its costs are exceeded only by certain renewable plants, such as offshore wind and solar power, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA)." Another issue is that the page is from 2012 and its numbers for renewables, solar PV in particular, overestimated costs for 2017. Solar PV costs declined much faster than the EIA estimated.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

Retric 8y ago

Costs are the real issue not worker safety. The trucking industry kills lots of people and nobody saftyreally cares. So, it’s really a straw man argument about non issues. Really, I would have no problem with Nuclear if it was cheap, but nobody can get it to be cheap (not even China) even without the need to load follow. We need cheap power and supplemental load following / storage. But, Nuclear is simply well behind the curve on both sides of the equation. Safe, stead production at 4c/kWh without subsidies would be a game changer or load following at much higher prices. Now, if the economics looked great then sure, but this stuff is all about minor improvements that don’t really change the game.

krastanov 8y ago
Skimming the first Google result for amortized cost, nuclear seems cheap: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/electric-generating-costs-a-primer/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/electri... However, I do not have good enough background to vet the source well. Are they missing something obvious? Also, I was not talking about worker safety, rater about everyone's health, from the miner to the person living near the power plant.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  Were you looking at production costs instead of levelized costs? That page notes "A new nuclear power plant, for example, has one of the highest levelized costs, particularly compared to coal and natural gas-fired plants, and its costs are exceeded only by certain renewable plants, such as offshore wind and solar power, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA)." Another issue is that the page is from 2012 and its numbers for renewables, solar PV in particular, overestimated costs for 2017. Solar PV costs declined much faster than the EIA estimated.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]