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No, the main reason nuclear has a hard time these days is that it's expensive. Governments simply don't have the willpower for a decade long trillion dollar pus
by audunw 6y ago
No, the main reason nuclear has a hard time these days is that it's expensive. Governments simply don't have the willpower for a decade long trillion dollar push for nuclear when the pay-off is far longer than 1-2 election cycles. Now that nuclear weapons isn't a motivator for pushing general nuclear R&D it's even harder.
I'm pretty sure if there was enough desire for nuclear from politicians and commercial interests, the public could be convinced.
I think we should support nuclear. But my biggest reasons for being negative towards a big push for nuclear, is that nuclear doesn't really solve our problems. It only solves part of the grid electricity problem, and probably only for major industrial countries. We still need massive improvements in energy storage solutions and renewable hydrogen/ammonia/synfuel production for transportation, industry and farming. If you solve those problems, you've also solved energy balancing of renewables. Since renewables seems to be scaling faster, the logical answer is to focus 95% of efforts on renewables and energy storage/conversion. Keep nuclear R&D at a low but sustainable level. Then we can start to convert some of the wind/solar farms to nuclear down the line. Hopefully with small modular reactors that'd be easier to mass-produce.
That is, if you assume we'll need nuclear power, you're basically assuming we're not going to solve the climate crisis.
But seriously, don't shut down existing nuclear reactors unless it's absolutely necessary. That's just dumb.
- sir_bearington 6y agoI'm not sure I follow. The fact that a nuclear grid doesn't require storage is precisely why it's so much better. In order to make renewables viable we'd need to redirect a huge portion of our storage capacity away from electric vehicles and towards grid storage instead. > That is, if you assume we'll need nuclear power, you're basically assuming we're not going to solve the climate crisis. How on earth does this make sense? The country that has come closest to solving the climate crisis (France) is heavily nuclear. Their carbon intensity of electricity is 1/7th that of Germany.
- tstrimple 6y agoIt's always funny to me how proponents of nuclear power use France as their example while ignoring that France is trying to dramatically reduce the amount of nuclear power they have because it's too expensive. If you're going to use them as an example, let's use them as a full example instead of just trying to paint a rosy picture on a nuanced subject.
- sir_bearington 6y agoEmphasis on "trying". They aren't actually reducing nuclear production because renewables can't replace it.
- posix_me_less 6y agoThe GP point is valid. France production is much cleaner thanks to nuclear energy. Whether nuclear energy being "too expensive" is actually a relevant problem in this discussion depends on your ideas about the role of government, importance of the CO2 reduction, importance of big private profits and so on.
- freeflight 6y agoThere's just so much misinformation about nuclear out there it's kind of crazy. Another claim I see regularly: Angela Merkel decided on the German nuclear exit as a response to Fukushima and she permanently shut down all reactors. When in reality Merkel tried to draw out and prolong a nuclear exit that was already decided and ratified in the early 2000s and Germany still has fission reactors running to this day.
- posix_me_less 6y agoNuclear energy solves one pretty big problem: the need for coal and gas power plants. Big fat proportion of CO2 and other toxic stuff is released to atmosphere at those power plants.