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Why is nuclear energy never mentioned as a remedy to global warming? It doesn’t have any of the problems renewables have, is safe enough in its current incarnat
by read_if_gay_ 7y ago
Why is nuclear energy never mentioned as a remedy to global warming? It doesn’t have any of the problems renewables have, is safe enough in its current incarnation and research is looking promising enough that one can reasonably expect the waste problem to get taken care of properly. Plus we won’t run out of fuel for like 1000 years.
- quonn 7y agoGermany had a 30-year long public discussion on nuclear. There is an overwhelming majority who rejects it. And for good reasons, too. If there is no other way to achieve our goals, we may have that discussion again, but I doubt it.
- sjwright 7y agoWhat were the good reasons? Is Germany at risk of tsunamis or sub-Soviet-level engineering incompetence? Do they fear statistics, which point out that nuclear is one of the safest forms of power per kilowatt, most comparable to wind and commercial (non-rooftop) solar?
- quonn 7y agoNobody knows where to put the waste, failures are catastrophic if rare and they have turned out not to be that rare if enough plants are deployed. As I said, it was a long discussion. Nobody wants to reopen it and I‘ll leave it at that.
- sjwright 7y agoAs opposed to coal, oil, gas etc where we know where to put the waste—into our atmosphere. That's great. Let's shut down the nuclear and keep the coal going until renewables step up. But for a few paranoid NIMBY protesters, everyone knows where to put nuclear waste—send it to breeder reactors. Also, catastrophic nuclear failures are not deadly. Radiation from Fukushima has killed 1 person. And despite being the most absurd scenario possible to contemplate, radiation from Chernobyl killed between 30-100 people. In 2011, there were 163 wind turbine accidents in England that killed 14 people. Wind kills more people than nuclear, and nuclear makes orders of magnitude more electricity.
- mav3rick 7y agoYou are joking if the radiation hasn't affected generations in those places.
- lispm 7y agoWell, Germany invested a zillion into a pebble-based thorium high-temperature reactor. Technological marvel. It didn't work reliable enough and was too costly. Closed down by the industry relatively silently... There is a site for nuclear waste. It does not work as expected. It needs to be cleaned for a few zillions... Nuclear is dead in Germany. Nobody wants it, it's too costly, it lacks critical solutions (like fuel reprocessing and nuclear waste storage), which also nobody wants to host.
- Bud 7y agoActually, not for good reasons. For bad reasons.
- lrem 7y agoBecause when you give people two options: 1. With 99% probability all remaining humans will die a slow, painful death in 60 years. 2. With 1% probability you will have to move homes to not get cancer in 20 years. A decisive majority of the voting people will choose option 1.
- adrianN 7y agoBecause it's too late to start building nuclear plants. We need to be carbon neutral in twenty, at most thirty years, if we start a linear reduction to zero NOW. Building a nuclear plant takes at least a decade. When it's done we already used up all our remaining carbon budget. And that's for the current speed at which nuclear plants are build. If we wanted to build an order of magnitude more, we'd first have to train nuclear engineers to staff them. And scale up production facilities for pressure vessels.