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>I wonder if they ever factor in societial factors like these. Radioactive releases like this are endemic to every coal-burning power station, which while a pr
by qball 7y ago
>I wonder if they ever factor in societial factors like these.
Radioactive releases like this are endemic to every coal-burning power station, which while a problem for public health certainly isn't publicized like this is.
Remember, carbon emissions will also destroy the planet if the current projections are anything to go by; I think the chance (certainly less likely with modern reactor designs) that a few local areas are rendered uninhabitable is a tradeoff society will need to be willing to make when the alternative is that the entire planet be rendered uninhabitable over a significantly longer timeframe.
Any other answer just isn't taking climate change seriously enough. Reactors are ready (with the proper funding) for construction today; solar/wind designs capable of supplying the quantity of baseload power nuclear can do not currently exist and neither does power storage- and they aren't nearly as scalable as building another reactor is (mainly due to land and raw materials usage) when power demands jump because everyone needs an air conditioning to survive the summer and a local desalinization plant (or water pipeline) because the rivers and aquifers no longer provide enough water. Additionally, if an energy-intensive carbon capture technology becomes available, the only energy source capable of powering such a device at the scale required is nuclear.
We've already offloaded our waste onto future generations. Might as well use the most effective technology we know how to create to stem the bleeding a bit.
- ben_w 7y agoI’m in favour of nuclear, but what you say of renewables is only half right. PV is currently around 0.5 terawatts and 2018’s relatively slow growth was 27%, and at these rates it is likely to solve most of our problems before any nuclear plant not yet commissioned gets finished. As for land usage, if the USA did this it would be smaller than the road network, rising to “about the same” if you want to replace all ICE cars with battery cars. CO2 capture, and desalination, don’t need to be run 24 hours per day, so there’s no reason to care if they don’t have energy storage to run at night. Likewise, AC is most important when, and just after, the sun is shining, so the storage need is low. Storage does have a long way to go before we’re out of trouble, but even if I wasn’t fairly optimistic about it, PV knocks out the worst carbon sources first, giving us more time to build — for example — your preferred nuclear reactors.
- Retric 7y agoReverse osmosis desalination needs to operate 24/7 as the capital costs are extreme. Storage backed solar power is significantly lower than nuclear across most of the world. Further as a base load production Nuclear can’t cheaply follow demand which makes it a poor fit in a world with occasionally negative wholesale prices. That is what is stopping significantly increased Nuclear adoption.
- baq 7y agoPlease don’t confuse finance and physics. Taxes and incentives can change financials overnight.
- Retric 7y agoIt’s cheaper for a reverse osmosis plant to buy batteries to operate at night than shut down 1/2 the tome. Stupid incentives can change what people do, but the economy pays for the inefficiency.
- baq 7y agoIt all depends on what you don't count as costs. When you take environmental impact of running a desalination plant off non-renewables, it might be more efficient to not run it at night if the wind isn't blowing. Thinking in terms of current prices doesn't make sense in the environment context. (I agree that a lot of batteries may be a very good solution.)
- tshanmu 7y agono carbon emissions will not destroy the planet - it will just destroy human civilisation.