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TLDR: Extrapolating current trends in renewable power generation, by the time we’re able to complete construction of new nuclear plants those plants won’t be ne

by mch82 7y ago

TLDR: Extrapolating current trends in renewable power generation, by the time we’re able to complete construction of new nuclear plants those plants won’t be necessary. There are six significant flaws in most recent pro-nuclear arguments I’ve read. To me, these flaws undermine the pro-nuclear case. 1. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7 years). 2. Authors focus on the percentage of energy production contributed by clean sources (solar, wind, etc.) TODAY, but ignore the growth trend (which matters since reactors take so long to bring online). 3. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years. 4. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to be wasted. 5. Authors ignore energy efficiency trends (electronics get more efficient over time). 6. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely under-reported. [1]: https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-reactor https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucle..., “Quora” [6]: https://youtu.be/rUeHPCYtWYQ https://youtu.be/rUeHPCYtWYQ, “Chernobyl Podcast” Edit: added TLDR. I’ll update with references for points 2-5 later. Slow internet connection now.

MayeulC 7y ago
> 1. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online As per the article: > An argument I haven’t seen before is that no other clean energy source can scale up as quickly as nuclear—IF the reactors are standardized. True, development costs are big, but these can be spread over multiple reactors. And once you have trained the workforce constructing one, the others can come much quicker. See historical values for France [1]. If we were to pipeline new reactors buildup everywhere, we'd be quite close to netting 0% emission in the energy sector. Granted, calculations and finding the optimal isn't that simple. > 3. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years. The consequences of our fossil fuel reliance are staging _right now_ what the ecosystem will look like millions of years in the future. Even if we were to produce 1000 times the amount of nuclear waste we currently have, we wouldn't come close to that. At least, it is easier to keep the stuff in one place. This is an emergency. Yes, nuclear is far from optimal, but is a whole lot better than the status quo. The other arguments aren't really valid in my opinion. 2. Builds on 1. The point is that nuclear can ramp up pretty quickly, as has been shown in the past. > 4. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to be wasted. This isn't really a problem with nuclear. Provide the baseload. You can tune up/down the amount of power, depending on your renewable output. Exchange energy with the neighbors depending on the needs. Pumped hydro can store quite a bit of energy as well. > 5. I fail to understand your point. Are we using less energy? I don't think so. [2] And a lot more stuff is going to need electricity in a clean energy transition (heaters, cars, industrial ovens...). If anything, cleaner/cheaper energy is likely going to increase consumption. > 6. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely under-reported. What safety data? The points they talk about in the article and use to say that reactors seem safe? Other energy generators aren't that safe, and also likely under-report. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_production_by_sources_in_France.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_production_by... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
x220 7y ago
>Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to be wasted. This "problem" is why we need nuclear. You can't store power generated by solar and wind, so when the sun goes down or the wind dies down, the power goes out unless you rely on some other source. Nuclear can work every hour of the day. It's the only power generation method which can supply power at every hour of the day and can be deployed almost everywhere (hydroelectric is neat but you're screwed if you don't have a good river). All these other "problems" have been written about extensively by specialists, just not by journalists. As for the rest of your problems with nuclear specifically, I don't think you're comparing the negatives of nuclear with the negatives of literally any other power source. The real reason we won't go nuclear is that Democrats and progressives don't like it because it's scary and makes them quake at night. We could use nuclear as one tool in fighting climate change, but we aren't willing to do that. We're dying by our own hands.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > so when the sun goes down or the wind dies down, the power goes out unless you rely on some other source. Power can be transmitted reasonably efficiently over very long distances. Long enough that this need not be a problem. Solar is more predictable than wind in this respect but the combination is more reliable than either alone.
  - x220 7y ago
    If the transmission and storage isn't a problem, why hasn't Germany's carbon emissions from energy stayed roughly the same? Since 2000 they've invested a lot into solar and wind, and yet they still produce roughly the same amount of energy from coal and gas.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Increased consumption, for the most part.
      - roenxi 7y ago
jacquesm 7y ago
I don't think your TLDR accurately covers the entire article, but fine. As for the rest, the big thing missing is that the per-capita energy consumption has been on the rise for as long as we have electricity. It's at 2.5 MWh/y or thereabouts. As developing countries move up on the ladder their consumption will increase, drastically so. This is going to cause substantial challenges. Personally, I'd love to see a Manhattan style project to get us to fusion. We know that it can be done, we have a shining example for proof of that every day. And in the meantime throw every $, Euro or Yen aimed at more nuclear power based on fission either at the fusion project or at renewables. You can build an awful lot of windmills for the price of one nuclear plant, and you can do it a lot quicker too.
- viraptor 7y ago
  And some of the increase is in our interest to happen. Moving cars from petrol to electric makes sense since we have ways to generate electricity is reasonable ways.
danmaz74 7y ago
Unluckily, you can't just extrapolate from current trends for solar and wind, because storage becomes more and more of a problem as the percentage of power coming from uncontrollable sources becomes higher and higher. When going from 0 to 10%, you don't need storage at all. But, if you want to go from eg 50% to 100%, then you need MASSIVE storage to guarantee that you have power when you need it. By the way, your point 4 for nuclear power doesn't hold ground. If you have lots of nuclear power plants, then you're going to not use (waste) a percentage of the power you produce at night by burning fissile material. But if you don't have any nuclear power plants, then 100% of the potential energy from fissile material that is available on Earth is going to be "wasted" (ie, not used).
- strainer 7y ago
  > if you want to go from eg 50% to 100%, then you need MASSIVE storage to guarantee that you have power when you need it. You really dont, you just need to burn fuel to fill in for gaps caused by weather, that become increasingly less frequent the more wind and solar is oversupplied. And oversupply is not a big problem - it can be easily curtailed. The optimal amount of renewables supply to build is over the level where they regularly exceed demand - and that is the stage where big batteries become very economical to build. Carbon neutral fuel-wise, biofuels and electrically generated fuels are very viable future options. Storage doesn't become more of a problem with more wind and solar - it becomes more of an opportunity to further reduce fuel consumption. Storage is not a problem now - economic solutions exist already to build it where it is valuable. Its just not needed much yet.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    > You really don't, you just need to burn fuel to fill in for gaps caused by weather That suggests that we'd need to keep most of the existing infrastructure for power generation and also replicate its capacity with wind and solar plants. That sounds both expensive and inefficient. > Storage is not a problem now - economic solutions exist already to build it where it is valuable. Its just not needed much yet. Nuclear has actually proven that it can work at the scale we need it (~20% of actual power generation from memory). Renewables and storage have not. So this is an argument of hypotheticals vs actuals. The burden of evidence on the hypothetical solution is a bit higher than an assertion that it'll work. The only grid-level storage solutions that actually store energy (not just modulate grid supply short-term) is big hydroelectric dams which are not one size fits all solutions.
ohthehugemanate 7y ago
It's cheating to require a perfect solution before admitting a better one. So, concretely, which source of universally available baseload power meets your criteria? Which would YOU advocate, given the urgent need to reduce emissions?
- mch82 7y ago
  I think it makes sense to keep operating reactors that are currently active. We’re already on the hook for storing that waste and managing those decommissioned sites. Similarly, I’m okay with a phased decommissioning of other dirty fuels. I just think it’s insane to set a long-term goal of growing dirty power jobs/industry. I’d advocate for an immediate stop to any anti-renewable efforts. We should be doing everything we can to help achieve renewables. Last, if we really think it’s a problem, we need to reduce energy consumption.
  - ohthehugemanate 7y ago
    I feel like you might be missing some key knowledge here, including nuclear in "dirty power". Unless you live near to a geothermal or hydro source, there is no renewable option available today that can provide baseload power, the "day in, day out" load that must always be available on the grid. The options are fossils and nuclear. Coal waste is massive: 68 tons of solid and 77 tons of CO2 per person-lifetime of electricity. The majority of that waste goes into the air, where we can't control it and don't know what it's up to (apart from fucking our climate of course). That's not counting fly ash and flue gases, the world's largest source of released radioactivity. That stuff is packed with heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and mercury. The air pollution from coal causes 35,000 deaths from lung disease per year in the US alone - when it's working perfectly. The same figure for China is estimated to be 350,000 deaths per year. In contrast, one person-lifetime of nuclear waste is about 12oz of solid, dry matter, which we can watch (and apparently re-use in modern reactor models). It produces zero CO2, and zero gaseous emissions. The total lifetime death toll from nuclear power is - at it's most generous - under 1,000 people. Renewables are a part of the solution, and long term, they will be the complete solution. But even if we could solve all the power generation, storage, and transmission problems within 50 years (which would be amazing)... we need a way to provide base load in the meantime. And we have an option that is safe, zero-carbon, and produces a fraction of the waste of the alternatives. Additionally, "we need to reduce energy consumption" is only an option if you're cool with 2/3 of the world continuing to live in abject poverty. By the end of this century the global population is projected to level off at 11 billion or so, with almost all of that growth coming outside the wealthy West. The 90% of the world which is currently using a fraction of global power generation wants washing machines, electric lighting, and computers, too. If the US cut average power consumption in half to match Europe, and then we all cut power consumption by a further 50%... we would still need to build multiples of our current baseload power generation capability. TL;DR: We need way more baseload power than we've got. It's not helpful to lump all our options into one category and rule them out completely... especially when one option comes with zero carbon.
nshepperd 7y ago
> 3. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years. Taking on debt is profitable if the interest rate is less than the return on investment. I'd rather take on the nuclear waste storage 'debt' (does no real damage if we do it properly, can be paid back later with much more powerful technological resources) than the climate change 'debt' (does real damage now, resulting in permanent loss of some amount of economic growth).
hetman 7y ago
I don't understand why point 5 about efficiency trends is relevant. Power consumption trends show us power consumption is continuing to climb irrespective of efficiency. It's clear that civilisation's need for power continues to expand even if some of our devices get more efficient.
- tupshin 7y ago
  except that US per capita electricity consumption has been falling for decades as efficiency has increased. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States
missosoup 7y ago
> 1. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7 years). Most of the wait time is due to lack of demand, e.g. it takes multiple years to build a pressure vessel but this production could be ramped up 10-100x if need be. The Quora source you cite actually says 48 months for modern reactors so I'm not sure where >7 years came from. > 3. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years. There is no waste storage problem. This is a myth that should have died a decade ago. Vitrified nuclear waste is inert and harmless. Modern reactors are also able to consume most of current waste. We already tolerate far worse waste products from e.g. the coal industry where it's a non-newsworthy occurrence for toxic tailings to completely destroy river systems. > 4. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to be wasted. The energy (not power) storage problem is unique to unreliable peaky power sources like solar and wind. Nuclear power plants provide a consistent and diallable power output. Energy storage is also a big impediment to large scale rollout of renewables because energy storage costs are superlinear with respect to demand. > 5. Authors ignore energy efficiency trends (electronics get more efficient over time). Increase in efficiency does not lead to decrease in consumption. It does the opposite. Look up induced demand. > 6. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely under-reported. Nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer and cleaner than anything else that exists including renewables. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... This comment is entirely misleading and the author is seriously misinformed about nuclear power. This should not be top comment on any discussion of nuclear power. This is just perpetuating FUD and myths that have all been deconstructed years ago.
- Arbalest 7y ago
  I would also argue that #2 was already being said 7 years ago. Further, growth is not always constant growth, let alone exponential growth. It may plateau, and then grow again further down the track after other problems (eg storage) are solved.
- mch82 7y ago
  There are 5 Quora answers: 3.3-5 years, 9 years, 7 years, 10-12 years (with 35 year outliers), and 4.8 years. 7 years is near the average of all those answers. > “ Most of the wait time is due to lack of demand” None of the Quora answers cited this as a reason. And the Quora answers are the low end of the scale (40 months) only included construction time in their answer, not site finding, licensing, or startup.
lukifer 7y ago
#5 may be unlikely to benefit us, given Jevons’ Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
nickik 7y ago
1. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7 years). Nuclear has been shown to be able to build fast and with massive scale. Faster then renewable by far. The waste problem is really no an issue once you understand it. Modern nuclear power plants and future nuclear plants can actually load follow quite well. Efficiency does not lead to less consumtion, but rather more consumtion. That is a basic and well known fact. Civilian Nuclear has a steller safty record and nuclear has the strictest observation of any industry.

by mch82 7y ago

MayeulC 7y ago

> 1. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online As per the article: > An argument I haven’t seen before is that no other clean energy source can scale up as quickly as nuclear—IF the reactors are standardized. True, development costs are big, but these can be spread over multiple reactors. And once you have trained the workforce constructing one, the others can come much quicker. See historical values for France [1]. If we were to pipeline new reactors buildup everywhere, we'd be quite close to netting 0% emission in the energy sector. Granted, calculations and finding the optimal isn't that simple. > 3. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years. The consequences of our fossil fuel reliance are staging _right now_ what the ecosystem will look like millions of years in the future. Even if we were to produce 1000 times the amount of nuclear waste we currently have, we wouldn't come close to that. At least, it is easier to keep the stuff in one place. This is an emergency. Yes, nuclear is far from optimal, but is a whole lot better than the status quo. The other arguments aren't really valid in my opinion. 2. Builds on 1. The point is that nuclear can ramp up pretty quickly, as has been shown in the past. > 4. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to be wasted. This isn't really a problem with nuclear. Provide the baseload. You can tune up/down the amount of power, depending on your renewable output. Exchange energy with the neighbors depending on the needs. Pumped hydro can store quite a bit of energy as well. > 5. I fail to understand your point. Are we using less energy? I don't think so. [2] And a lot more stuff is going to need electricity in a clean energy transition (heaters, cars, industrial ovens...). If anything, cleaner/cheaper energy is likely going to increase consumption. > 6. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely under-reported. What safety data? The points they talk about in the article and use to say that reactors seem safe? Other energy generators aren't that safe, and also likely under-report. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_production_by_sources_in_France.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_production_by... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

x220 7y ago

>Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to be wasted. This "problem" is why we need nuclear. You can't store power generated by solar and wind, so when the sun goes down or the wind dies down, the power goes out unless you rely on some other source. Nuclear can work every hour of the day. It's the only power generation method which can supply power at every hour of the day and can be deployed almost everywhere (hydroelectric is neat but you're screwed if you don't have a good river). All these other "problems" have been written about extensively by specialists, just not by journalists. As for the rest of your problems with nuclear specifically, I don't think you're comparing the negatives of nuclear with the negatives of literally any other power source. The real reason we won't go nuclear is that Democrats and progressives don't like it because it's scary and makes them quake at night. We could use nuclear as one tool in fighting climate change, but we aren't willing to do that. We're dying by our own hands.

jacquesm 7y ago
> so when the sun goes down or the wind dies down, the power goes out unless you rely on some other source. Power can be transmitted reasonably efficiently over very long distances. Long enough that this need not be a problem. Solar is more predictable than wind in this respect but the combination is more reliable than either alone.
- x220 7y ago
  If the transmission and storage isn't a problem, why hasn't Germany's carbon emissions from energy stayed roughly the same? Since 2000 they've invested a lot into solar and wind, and yet they still produce roughly the same amount of energy from coal and gas.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Increased consumption, for the most part.
    - roenxi 7y ago

jacquesm 7y ago

I don't think your TLDR accurately covers the entire article, but fine. As for the rest, the big thing missing is that the per-capita energy consumption has been on the rise for as long as we have electricity. It's at 2.5 MWh/y or thereabouts. As developing countries move up on the ladder their consumption will increase, drastically so. This is going to cause substantial challenges. Personally, I'd love to see a Manhattan style project to get us to fusion. We know that it can be done, we have a shining example for proof of that every day. And in the meantime throw every $, Euro or Yen aimed at more nuclear power based on fission either at the fusion project or at renewables. You can build an awful lot of windmills for the price of one nuclear plant, and you can do it a lot quicker too.

viraptor 7y ago
And some of the increase is in our interest to happen. Moving cars from petrol to electric makes sense since we have ways to generate electricity is reasonable ways.

danmaz74 7y ago

Unluckily, you can't just extrapolate from current trends for solar and wind, because storage becomes more and more of a problem as the percentage of power coming from uncontrollable sources becomes higher and higher. When going from 0 to 10%, you don't need storage at all. But, if you want to go from eg 50% to 100%, then you need MASSIVE storage to guarantee that you have power when you need it. By the way, your point 4 for nuclear power doesn't hold ground. If you have lots of nuclear power plants, then you're going to not use (waste) a percentage of the power you produce at night by burning fissile material. But if you don't have any nuclear power plants, then 100% of the potential energy from fissile material that is available on Earth is going to be "wasted" (ie, not used).

strainer 7y ago
> if you want to go from eg 50% to 100%, then you need MASSIVE storage to guarantee that you have power when you need it. You really dont, you just need to burn fuel to fill in for gaps caused by weather, that become increasingly less frequent the more wind and solar is oversupplied. And oversupply is not a big problem - it can be easily curtailed. The optimal amount of renewables supply to build is over the level where they regularly exceed demand - and that is the stage where big batteries become very economical to build. Carbon neutral fuel-wise, biofuels and electrically generated fuels are very viable future options. Storage doesn't become more of a problem with more wind and solar - it becomes more of an opportunity to further reduce fuel consumption. Storage is not a problem now - economic solutions exist already to build it where it is valuable. Its just not needed much yet.
- roenxi 7y ago
  > You really don't, you just need to burn fuel to fill in for gaps caused by weather That suggests that we'd need to keep most of the existing infrastructure for power generation and also replicate its capacity with wind and solar plants. That sounds both expensive and inefficient. > Storage is not a problem now - economic solutions exist already to build it where it is valuable. Its just not needed much yet. Nuclear has actually proven that it can work at the scale we need it (~20% of actual power generation from memory). Renewables and storage have not. So this is an argument of hypotheticals vs actuals. The burden of evidence on the hypothetical solution is a bit higher than an assertion that it'll work. The only grid-level storage solutions that actually store energy (not just modulate grid supply short-term) is big hydroelectric dams which are not one size fits all solutions.

ohthehugemanate 7y ago

It's cheating to require a perfect solution before admitting a better one. So, concretely, which source of universally available baseload power meets your criteria? Which would YOU advocate, given the urgent need to reduce emissions?

mch82 7y ago
I think it makes sense to keep operating reactors that are currently active. We’re already on the hook for storing that waste and managing those decommissioned sites. Similarly, I’m okay with a phased decommissioning of other dirty fuels. I just think it’s insane to set a long-term goal of growing dirty power jobs/industry. I’d advocate for an immediate stop to any anti-renewable efforts. We should be doing everything we can to help achieve renewables. Last, if we really think it’s a problem, we need to reduce energy consumption.
- ohthehugemanate 7y ago
  I feel like you might be missing some key knowledge here, including nuclear in "dirty power". Unless you live near to a geothermal or hydro source, there is no renewable option available today that can provide baseload power, the "day in, day out" load that must always be available on the grid. The options are fossils and nuclear. Coal waste is massive: 68 tons of solid and 77 tons of CO2 per person-lifetime of electricity. The majority of that waste goes into the air, where we can't control it and don't know what it's up to (apart from fucking our climate of course). That's not counting fly ash and flue gases, the world's largest source of released radioactivity. That stuff is packed with heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and mercury. The air pollution from coal causes 35,000 deaths from lung disease per year in the US alone - when it's working perfectly. The same figure for China is estimated to be 350,000 deaths per year. In contrast, one person-lifetime of nuclear waste is about 12oz of solid, dry matter, which we can watch (and apparently re-use in modern reactor models). It produces zero CO2, and zero gaseous emissions. The total lifetime death toll from nuclear power is - at it's most generous - under 1,000 people. Renewables are a part of the solution, and long term, they will be the complete solution. But even if we could solve all the power generation, storage, and transmission problems within 50 years (which would be amazing)... we need a way to provide base load in the meantime. And we have an option that is safe, zero-carbon, and produces a fraction of the waste of the alternatives. Additionally, "we need to reduce energy consumption" is only an option if you're cool with 2/3 of the world continuing to live in abject poverty. By the end of this century the global population is projected to level off at 11 billion or so, with almost all of that growth coming outside the wealthy West. The 90% of the world which is currently using a fraction of global power generation wants washing machines, electric lighting, and computers, too. If the US cut average power consumption in half to match Europe, and then we all cut power consumption by a further 50%... we would still need to build multiples of our current baseload power generation capability. TL;DR: We need way more baseload power than we've got. It's not helpful to lump all our options into one category and rule them out completely... especially when one option comes with zero carbon.

nshepperd 7y ago

> 3. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years. Taking on debt is profitable if the interest rate is less than the return on investment. I'd rather take on the nuclear waste storage 'debt' (does no real damage if we do it properly, can be paid back later with much more powerful technological resources) than the climate change 'debt' (does real damage now, resulting in permanent loss of some amount of economic growth).

hetman 7y ago

I don't understand why point 5 about efficiency trends is relevant. Power consumption trends show us power consumption is continuing to climb irrespective of efficiency. It's clear that civilisation's need for power continues to expand even if some of our devices get more efficient.

tupshin 7y ago
except that US per capita electricity consumption has been falling for decades as efficiency has increased. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States

missosoup 7y ago

> 1. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7 years). Most of the wait time is due to lack of demand, e.g. it takes multiple years to build a pressure vessel but this production could be ramped up 10-100x if need be. The Quora source you cite actually says 48 months for modern reactors so I'm not sure where >7 years came from. > 3. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years. There is no waste storage problem. This is a myth that should have died a decade ago. Vitrified nuclear waste is inert and harmless. Modern reactors are also able to consume most of current waste. We already tolerate far worse waste products from e.g. the coal industry where it's a non-newsworthy occurrence for toxic tailings to completely destroy river systems. > 4. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to be wasted. The energy (not power) storage problem is unique to unreliable peaky power sources like solar and wind. Nuclear power plants provide a consistent and diallable power output. Energy storage is also a big impediment to large scale rollout of renewables because energy storage costs are superlinear with respect to demand. > 5. Authors ignore energy efficiency trends (electronics get more efficient over time). Increase in efficiency does not lead to decrease in consumption. It does the opposite. Look up induced demand. > 6. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely under-reported. Nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer and cleaner than anything else that exists including renewables. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... This comment is entirely misleading and the author is seriously misinformed about nuclear power. This should not be top comment on any discussion of nuclear power. This is just perpetuating FUD and myths that have all been deconstructed years ago.

Arbalest 7y ago
I would also argue that #2 was already being said 7 years ago. Further, growth is not always constant growth, let alone exponential growth. It may plateau, and then grow again further down the track after other problems (eg storage) are solved.
mch82 7y ago
There are 5 Quora answers: 3.3-5 years, 9 years, 7 years, 10-12 years (with 35 year outliers), and 4.8 years. 7 years is near the average of all those answers. > “ Most of the wait time is due to lack of demand” None of the Quora answers cited this as a reason. And the Quora answers are the low end of the scale (40 months) only included construction time in their answer, not site finding, licensing, or startup.

lukifer 7y ago

#5 may be unlikely to benefit us, given Jevons’ Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

nickik 7y ago

1. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7 years). Nuclear has been shown to be able to build fast and with massive scale. Faster then renewable by far. The waste problem is really no an issue once you understand it. Modern nuclear power plants and future nuclear plants can actually load follow quite well. Efficiency does not lead to less consumtion, but rather more consumtion. That is a basic and well known fact. Civilian Nuclear has a steller safty record and nuclear has the strictest observation of any industry.