2 ms·

Land use is not the main issue, but it's worth noting that nuclear power plants can not be build in nearly as many places as wind farms or solar power (as impli

Land use is not the main issue, but it's worth noting that nuclear power plants can not be build in nearly as many places as wind farms or solar power (as implicitly acknowledged in your coastline example), you need sufficient cooling capability. But the main point still remains, nuclear power is bad at everything but baseload. And pointing at breeder or thorium reactors is exactly the thing I mentioned earlier. Technology that is completely uneconomical or unproven on commercial scale. Even France stopped doing breeders. You are still ignoring the land use of open pit mining as well. At the end nuclear is an uneconomic technology with significant unresolved issues even after decades of heavy subsidising, while renewable are cheaper proven and continously getting cheaper. The only reason to keep nuclear on the table is to keep power generation highly centralised and monopolized thus favouring few large corporations. It's ironic that nuclear is often proposed by self-confessed libertarians even though its the epitome of centralised corporatism.

baud147258 6y ago
I don't know which countries you're talking about, but in France 'renewable' energies are heavily subsided,
- eru 6y ago
  Cycomanic never said renewables don't get any subsidies. And that assumption is not needed for their argument. The comment you are replying to merely said that decades of subsidizing nuclear didn't remove technical issues. And perhaps you can say the comment implied that the technical issues with renewables did mostly go away, without making any comment on whether renewables got any subsidies and on whether they helped or hindered. (I would even go so far to argue that most of nuclear's remaining technical issues are from continued government meddling. But that's down to public opinion that wants government control of nuclear power. In places like eg Germany, for a long time the government was much more pro-nuclear than the population.)
eru 6y ago
> You are still ignoring the land use of open pit mining as well. The book I linked to mentioned some of that. It's just not much of an issue, since you need so little fuel. (And you could filter that fuel out of the ocean, if you really needed to.) > At the end nuclear is an uneconomic technology with significant unresolved issues even after decades of heavy subsidising, while renewable are cheaper proven and continously getting cheaper. The only reason to keep nuclear on the table is to keep power generation highly centralised and monopolized thus favouring few large corporations. It's ironic that nuclear is often proposed by self-confessed libertarians even though its the epitome of centralised corporatism. I'm just as happy as the next guy that decentralisable renewable options like wind and solar are becoming more and more competitive. Even the ascent of shale gas is a boon for the environment as long as it is replacing coal. Nuclear fission (and fusion) are interesting as technologies. And especially fission is contrarian enough these days to attract certain types of admirers. I do agree that in practice given global public opinion as it is, nuclear power is nigh guaranteed to remain centralised. I am arguing that nuclear power generation has some flaws, but also that it doesn't have all the flaws. Nuclear energy also used to serve as a useful reminder to the peak oil doomsayers (and these days to the climate change doomsayers), that in principle we could keep living a very energy intensive lifestyle, even if we were to stop using fossil fuels completely, and even if renewable solar and wind never took off. Some people seemed to get an almost religious elation out of predicting that our sins would need to be paid for with lots of hardship and privation. Instead of just taking a hit of perhaps 10% of GDP or so to run everything on nuclear instead of oil. (Similar to how the Club of Rome folks predicted doom from overpopulation. To broad popular appeal.) As you point out, we are even luckier: renewables like wind and solar haven gotten cheaper faster than expected, so we found an even better alternative to oil and coal. But it's good to know that there's another backup that in the grand scheme of things is not much worse than cheap oil used to be.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  I predict we will need to stop using GDP as a measure for progress. It was invented as a measure for production in war time (WW2) and was incredibly useful for its purpose. However initially it purposefully did not include banking, advertising, military spending..., because they don't add to a countries production capabilities. It is a terrible measure for human well being. Many things which are actually detrimental increase the GDP (accidents, obesity, depression, pollution...). The inventor of the GDP Simon Kuznets even warned against using it to judge progress, but instead it has become this metric that is the be all.

baud147258 6y ago

I don't know which countries you're talking about, but in France 'renewable' energies are heavily subsided,

eru 6y ago
Cycomanic never said renewables don't get any subsidies. And that assumption is not needed for their argument. The comment you are replying to merely said that decades of subsidizing nuclear didn't remove technical issues. And perhaps you can say the comment implied that the technical issues with renewables did mostly go away, without making any comment on whether renewables got any subsidies and on whether they helped or hindered. (I would even go so far to argue that most of nuclear's remaining technical issues are from continued government meddling. But that's down to public opinion that wants government control of nuclear power. In places like eg Germany, for a long time the government was much more pro-nuclear than the population.)

eru 6y ago

> You are still ignoring the land use of open pit mining as well. The book I linked to mentioned some of that. It's just not much of an issue, since you need so little fuel. (And you could filter that fuel out of the ocean, if you really needed to.) > At the end nuclear is an uneconomic technology with significant unresolved issues even after decades of heavy subsidising, while renewable are cheaper proven and continously getting cheaper. The only reason to keep nuclear on the table is to keep power generation highly centralised and monopolized thus favouring few large corporations. It's ironic that nuclear is often proposed by self-confessed libertarians even though its the epitome of centralised corporatism. I'm just as happy as the next guy that decentralisable renewable options like wind and solar are becoming more and more competitive. Even the ascent of shale gas is a boon for the environment as long as it is replacing coal. Nuclear fission (and fusion) are interesting as technologies. And especially fission is contrarian enough these days to attract certain types of admirers. I do agree that in practice given global public opinion as it is, nuclear power is nigh guaranteed to remain centralised. I am arguing that nuclear power generation has some flaws, but also that it doesn't have all the flaws. Nuclear energy also used to serve as a useful reminder to the peak oil doomsayers (and these days to the climate change doomsayers), that in principle we could keep living a very energy intensive lifestyle, even if we were to stop using fossil fuels completely, and even if renewable solar and wind never took off. Some people seemed to get an almost religious elation out of predicting that our sins would need to be paid for with lots of hardship and privation. Instead of just taking a hit of perhaps 10% of GDP or so to run everything on nuclear instead of oil. (Similar to how the Club of Rome folks predicted doom from overpopulation. To broad popular appeal.) As you point out, we are even luckier: renewables like wind and solar haven gotten cheaper faster than expected, so we found an even better alternative to oil and coal. But it's good to know that there's another backup that in the grand scheme of things is not much worse than cheap oil used to be.

cycomanic 6y ago
I predict we will need to stop using GDP as a measure for progress. It was invented as a measure for production in war time (WW2) and was incredibly useful for its purpose. However initially it purposefully did not include banking, advertising, military spending..., because they don't add to a countries production capabilities. It is a terrible measure for human well being. Many things which are actually detrimental increase the GDP (accidents, obesity, depression, pollution...). The inventor of the GDP Simon Kuznets even warned against using it to judge progress, but instead it has become this metric that is the be all.