5 ms·

compared to what? This is alarmist thinking that's not really based in anything other than politics and nimbyism. If you truly believe the world is going to e

by jki275 8y ago

compared to what? This is alarmist thinking that's not really based in anything other than politics and nimbyism. If you truly believe the world is going to end because of climate change, nuclear is literally the only path to massively decrease carbon output and still meet the world's energy needs. Is it expensive? Of course. Is it going to take years? Of course. But you're never going to get there with solar or wind -- they simply cannot meet the requirements -- ever. We stopped essentially all research and design of nuclear power plants after TMI, solely because of nimbyism -- had we not done that, we would probably be 90+% nuclear and there would be no more coal plants.

adrianN 8y ago
I'm pro nuclear. But just the construction time for a new plant is fairly close to a decade. That doesn't include planning. I'd also assume that we simply don't have the capacity to build thousands of reactors in a decade, for example because the manufacturing of pressure vessels is a fairly specialized industry. We have about ten years to cut our emissions by at least 40% compared to 2010 and twenty more years to become completely carbon neutral. We need to invest massively into solar, wind, and storage. We need to insulate our homes. We need to ban cars from cities. We need immense reforestation projects. If we have the resources to also build nuclear plants while we're doing all the other things, great, but it can't be the option with the highest priority because they're expensive and take forever until they're done.
- jki275 8y ago
  I think your belief that those other options would be tenable in the time frame you believe in is misled. They generate tiny fractions of the energy most people believe, and they generally never pay for themselves over their entire lifetimes. Where do you think the batteries come from? There's a finite supply of lithium. "Ban cars from cities" is a pipe dream in north america -- it's like talking about colonizing Neptune. Not going to happen in our lifetimes, probably not in two hundred years -- maybe not ever. The entire infrastructure of the american continents and huge amounts of Europe and Asia as well is built around vehicular transport. You argue those things are necessary, but then argue against the only thing that could make even a dent in the issue because it's expensive and takes time. We don't need thousands of reactors, and we don't necessarily need the ones we do build to be like the ones we use today. Had the environmentalist nimbys not stopped all R&D and construction in the 70s, we would have fixed this problem by now. There are multiple reactor designs that are safe and effective and inexpensive to run -- but nobody's building them because they think solar is going to save the world and nuclear is scary. That's what needs to be fixed. I see that Bill Gates is lobbying for new reactor designs and construction -- I really hope he's successful.
- titzer 8y ago
  It takes far, far more resources to build out wind and solar than nuclear. The obstacles to nuclear are primarily political, regulatory, and psychological. There actually isn't a hell of a lot of money to be made in nuclear. The real reason that wind and solar are taking off is a successful market intervention from governments to spur investments there and make it profitable. But make no mistake, wind and solar are a massive ecological boondoggle. They do more environmental damage than good, and they simply do not displace fossil fuel sources of energy, just add. Hell, the data is right in the first set of charts in the article--gas is displacing everything else, but still growing faster than coal is shrinking. This basically means that renewables are just additional build-out. Which is where people move the goalposts and talk about how they supposedly displaced new coal or gas--which they clearly did not. No, we should have invested in nuclear power in the 1950s. We'd be probably fine today. Our choice now is: do we reduce the energy intensity of our economies and completely displace all of our fossil fuels with nuclear, or do we go over the cliff? As I said in my OP, we're going over the cliff.
  - jki275 8y ago
    You said it significantly better than I did. Absolutely correct in almost everything you said from my perspective. The only caveat I would make is that I think we're farther from the cliff than people tend to say -- that's not to say we shouldn't do things to mitigate our impact on the environment, I absolutely believe we should, but only that I don't see it as dire as some make it out to be.

by jki275 8y ago

adrianN 8y ago

I'm pro nuclear. But just the construction time for a new plant is fairly close to a decade. That doesn't include planning. I'd also assume that we simply don't have the capacity to build thousands of reactors in a decade, for example because the manufacturing of pressure vessels is a fairly specialized industry. We have about ten years to cut our emissions by at least 40% compared to 2010 and twenty more years to become completely carbon neutral. We need to invest massively into solar, wind, and storage. We need to insulate our homes. We need to ban cars from cities. We need immense reforestation projects. If we have the resources to also build nuclear plants while we're doing all the other things, great, but it can't be the option with the highest priority because they're expensive and take forever until they're done.

jki275 8y ago
I think your belief that those other options would be tenable in the time frame you believe in is misled. They generate tiny fractions of the energy most people believe, and they generally never pay for themselves over their entire lifetimes. Where do you think the batteries come from? There's a finite supply of lithium. "Ban cars from cities" is a pipe dream in north america -- it's like talking about colonizing Neptune. Not going to happen in our lifetimes, probably not in two hundred years -- maybe not ever. The entire infrastructure of the american continents and huge amounts of Europe and Asia as well is built around vehicular transport. You argue those things are necessary, but then argue against the only thing that could make even a dent in the issue because it's expensive and takes time. We don't need thousands of reactors, and we don't necessarily need the ones we do build to be like the ones we use today. Had the environmentalist nimbys not stopped all R&D and construction in the 70s, we would have fixed this problem by now. There are multiple reactor designs that are safe and effective and inexpensive to run -- but nobody's building them because they think solar is going to save the world and nuclear is scary. That's what needs to be fixed. I see that Bill Gates is lobbying for new reactor designs and construction -- I really hope he's successful.
titzer 8y ago
It takes far, far more resources to build out wind and solar than nuclear. The obstacles to nuclear are primarily political, regulatory, and psychological. There actually isn't a hell of a lot of money to be made in nuclear. The real reason that wind and solar are taking off is a successful market intervention from governments to spur investments there and make it profitable. But make no mistake, wind and solar are a massive ecological boondoggle. They do more environmental damage than good, and they simply do not displace fossil fuel sources of energy, just add. Hell, the data is right in the first set of charts in the article--gas is displacing everything else, but still growing faster than coal is shrinking. This basically means that renewables are just additional build-out. Which is where people move the goalposts and talk about how they supposedly displaced new coal or gas--which they clearly did not. No, we should have invested in nuclear power in the 1950s. We'd be probably fine today. Our choice now is: do we reduce the energy intensity of our economies and completely displace all of our fossil fuels with nuclear, or do we go over the cliff? As I said in my OP, we're going over the cliff.
- jki275 8y ago
  You said it significantly better than I did. Absolutely correct in almost everything you said from my perspective. The only caveat I would make is that I think we're farther from the cliff than people tend to say -- that's not to say we shouldn't do things to mitigate our impact on the environment, I absolutely believe we should, but only that I don't see it as dire as some make it out to be.