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We need nuclear to bridge the gap, and actually let us phase out coal. Yet there's so much fearmongering over it. It's killed far fewer people than coal per ene

by 0xTJ 5y ago

We need nuclear to bridge the gap, and actually let us phase out coal. Yet there's so much fearmongering over it. It's killed far fewer people than coal per energy unit, but people still freak out about it. I'm Canadian, and the people I know who are the most anti-nuclear are the ones from the main fossil fuel province. Even if they don't live there anymore, are against fossil fuels, and have an engineering degree, they've had the fear of nuclear ingrained into them.

kennywinker 5y ago
We don’t need to “bridge the gap” we need to radically alter all of our lives immediately. The pandemic has shown it’s possible. there’s no way to consume ourselves out of this crisis. At very least because if climate change doesn’t do us in, microplastics will.
- voisin 5y ago
  And yet, because climate change isn’t as immediately scary to the average person as Covid19 was/is, we can’t even seem to agree on the easiest to implement solutions. We can’t even agree to the “wear a mask” equivalent, which isn’t surprising since we couldn’t agree to just wear masks! I am generally an optimistic person, but I think we are completely and utterly screwed on climate change and I feel quite depressed and helpless about it.
adelHBN 5y ago
You're right. Nuclear has come a long way... it's safer and can provide more power.
shafyy 5y ago
No, we need to invest more in solar and wind. They're already cheaper and safer than Nuclear, and will only continue to get cheaper. You say that nuclear has killed fewer people. That's true, but this is not the main problem of Nuclear. The main problems are 1) that catastrophic events can and will happen in the future. That's why nobody wants to live next to a nuclear power plant. 2) Nuclear waste storage. Why would even invest in nuclear power plants now that it's pretty clear that other alternatives are cheaper and safer? (I'm not saying abandon nuclear power research, there are definitey niche cases where it makes sense, like space exploration).
- citrin_ru 5y ago
  > 2) Nuclear waste storage. Coal ash is radioactive too and people don't mind to live nearby. There is a lot of irrational in the fear of nuclear power.
- kemonocode 5y ago
  > The main problems are 1) that catastrophic events can and will happen in the future. That's why nobody wants to live next to a nuclear power plant. The chances for such events are vanishingly low when it comes to modern reactors. Seriously, as hard as it is to believe, we've come so, so far from Chernobyl. Thorium-based reactors are meltdown-proof [0], and Thorium comes with the plus in that it's not as easily weaponizable [1]. > 2) Nuclear waste storage. Thorium reactors also produce less dangerous waste [2], which is great! They're not a panacea by any means- it is still technically possible to make weapons using Thorium reactors even if it's more difficult, and fuel is harder to prepare, but I do think the upsides greatly overcome the downsides. Solar and wind aren't viable everywhere, which is why we need nuclear. The sooner we get over our inveterate fear of it, as difficult as it may be, the better. [0] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20090038711.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/200900... [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html#prolif https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html#prolif [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257126696_Abundant_thorium_as_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel_Important_waste_disposal_and_weapon_proliferation_advantages https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257126696_Abundant_...
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  These arguments have been circular forever. There’s likely not enough materials for solar everywhere, or enough space for wind everywhere, but investing on all forms today is more valuable than continuing to argue
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    What material are we going to run out of for solar? Silicon (sand) is the main ingredient. Running out of space for wind? Huh? Yes obviously we use the best places first but the entire Earth has wind, and almost every land usage can be co sited with wind towers.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
We are rolling out solar and wind much faster than any meaningful amount of nuclear can get through even a pre-planning phase. The reason is simple: it's far cheaper and quicker. Fear has relatively little to do with this. You can roll out facilities with GW of capacity in under a year. The total capacity of nuclear in the US is something like 94 GW after about 7 decades of nuclear being a thing. Wind is 120 GW. 17 of that got installed last year. Over the next decade, that is likely to continue to grow to a couple of hundred GW of capacity. In general, countries world wide are rolling out impressive amounts of wind and solar every year. Quite many countries have hit the point where it is double digit percentage of energy generation and generally the dominant form of energy. Quite a few of these countries are actually on track to be 100% renewable powered by the mid 2030s. Some are projected to hit their targets early. Nuclear is generally not a part of those plans in most of those countries. Mostly, no new plants are being built in these countries. No plants are being planned even. And actually, no plant could feasibly be planned and built until the mid 2030s in any case given how slow and expensive building such plants is and how politically sensitive that is. Renewables outgrow everything else by no small margin almost everywhere on this planet. All we need to do is do more of that faster and at the same time figure out storage and long distance transport (i.e. cables) of energy.
oliwarner 5y ago
The build turnaround is too long to be practical. Just getting plans for the hundreds of stations we'd need would take years. Mandating that all newbuilds and planned extensions have PV roofs and local storage would be far more realistic to meet our power requirements.
Valgrim 5y ago
It's not just fear. Building a nuclear power plant is a complicated, decades-long, tremendously expensive engineering prowess. Due to the catastrophic failure modes of nuclear reactors compared to other power plants, it requires a huge amount of safety and regulation (and it's why it has killed less people than other energy sources). It also requires a large and steady amount of water to work with current designs, so you can't build them just anywhere, and you need to extrapolate 50-100 years into the future to take into account droughs and rising sea levels. I'm all for nuclear, I'm amazed at the power density of nuclear fuel (I saw recently that a few hundred grams of plutonium contain the same amount of energy as a fully fuelled Starship), but reducing the counter-argument to "fear" is not useful. Let's try and solve the real problems instead: the cost problems, the building time problems, the nuclear waste problems and the proliferation problems. The fear and political reluctance will then go away by itself. In parallel, we should not waste time and enforce more energy-efficient housing, mandatory remote working whenever possible, promote better transportation options than cars, connect grids together, put solar/wing/biogas/geothermal plants everywhere, find more efficient ways to ship cargo across the planet, etc.

by 0xTJ 5y ago

kennywinker 5y ago

We don’t need to “bridge the gap” we need to radically alter all of our lives immediately. The pandemic has shown it’s possible. there’s no way to consume ourselves out of this crisis. At very least because if climate change doesn’t do us in, microplastics will.

voisin 5y ago
And yet, because climate change isn’t as immediately scary to the average person as Covid19 was/is, we can’t even seem to agree on the easiest to implement solutions. We can’t even agree to the “wear a mask” equivalent, which isn’t surprising since we couldn’t agree to just wear masks! I am generally an optimistic person, but I think we are completely and utterly screwed on climate change and I feel quite depressed and helpless about it.

adelHBN 5y ago

You're right. Nuclear has come a long way... it's safer and can provide more power.

shafyy 5y ago

No, we need to invest more in solar and wind. They're already cheaper and safer than Nuclear, and will only continue to get cheaper. You say that nuclear has killed fewer people. That's true, but this is not the main problem of Nuclear. The main problems are 1) that catastrophic events can and will happen in the future. That's why nobody wants to live next to a nuclear power plant. 2) Nuclear waste storage. Why would even invest in nuclear power plants now that it's pretty clear that other alternatives are cheaper and safer? (I'm not saying abandon nuclear power research, there are definitey niche cases where it makes sense, like space exploration).

citrin_ru 5y ago
> 2) Nuclear waste storage. Coal ash is radioactive too and people don't mind to live nearby. There is a lot of irrational in the fear of nuclear power.
kemonocode 5y ago
> The main problems are 1) that catastrophic events can and will happen in the future. That's why nobody wants to live next to a nuclear power plant. The chances for such events are vanishingly low when it comes to modern reactors. Seriously, as hard as it is to believe, we've come so, so far from Chernobyl. Thorium-based reactors are meltdown-proof [0], and Thorium comes with the plus in that it's not as easily weaponizable [1]. > 2) Nuclear waste storage. Thorium reactors also produce less dangerous waste [2], which is great! They're not a panacea by any means- it is still technically possible to make weapons using Thorium reactors even if it's more difficult, and fuel is harder to prepare, but I do think the upsides greatly overcome the downsides. Solar and wind aren't viable everywhere, which is why we need nuclear. The sooner we get over our inveterate fear of it, as difficult as it may be, the better. [0] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20090038711.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/200900... [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html#prolif https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html#prolif [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257126696_Abundant_thorium_as_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel_Important_waste_disposal_and_weapon_proliferation_advantages https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257126696_Abundant_...
nomoreplease 5y ago
These arguments have been circular forever. There’s likely not enough materials for solar everywhere, or enough space for wind everywhere, but investing on all forms today is more valuable than continuing to argue
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  What material are we going to run out of for solar? Silicon (sand) is the main ingredient. Running out of space for wind? Huh? Yes obviously we use the best places first but the entire Earth has wind, and almost every land usage can be co sited with wind towers.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

We are rolling out solar and wind much faster than any meaningful amount of nuclear can get through even a pre-planning phase. The reason is simple: it's far cheaper and quicker. Fear has relatively little to do with this. You can roll out facilities with GW of capacity in under a year. The total capacity of nuclear in the US is something like 94 GW after about 7 decades of nuclear being a thing. Wind is 120 GW. 17 of that got installed last year. Over the next decade, that is likely to continue to grow to a couple of hundred GW of capacity. In general, countries world wide are rolling out impressive amounts of wind and solar every year. Quite many countries have hit the point where it is double digit percentage of energy generation and generally the dominant form of energy. Quite a few of these countries are actually on track to be 100% renewable powered by the mid 2030s. Some are projected to hit their targets early. Nuclear is generally not a part of those plans in most of those countries. Mostly, no new plants are being built in these countries. No plants are being planned even. And actually, no plant could feasibly be planned and built until the mid 2030s in any case given how slow and expensive building such plants is and how politically sensitive that is. Renewables outgrow everything else by no small margin almost everywhere on this planet. All we need to do is do more of that faster and at the same time figure out storage and long distance transport (i.e. cables) of energy.

oliwarner 5y ago

The build turnaround is too long to be practical. Just getting plans for the hundreds of stations we'd need would take years. Mandating that all newbuilds and planned extensions have PV roofs and local storage would be far more realistic to meet our power requirements.

Valgrim 5y ago

It's not just fear. Building a nuclear power plant is a complicated, decades-long, tremendously expensive engineering prowess. Due to the catastrophic failure modes of nuclear reactors compared to other power plants, it requires a huge amount of safety and regulation (and it's why it has killed less people than other energy sources). It also requires a large and steady amount of water to work with current designs, so you can't build them just anywhere, and you need to extrapolate 50-100 years into the future to take into account droughs and rising sea levels. I'm all for nuclear, I'm amazed at the power density of nuclear fuel (I saw recently that a few hundred grams of plutonium contain the same amount of energy as a fully fuelled Starship), but reducing the counter-argument to "fear" is not useful. Let's try and solve the real problems instead: the cost problems, the building time problems, the nuclear waste problems and the proliferation problems. The fear and political reluctance will then go away by itself. In parallel, we should not waste time and enforce more energy-efficient housing, mandatory remote working whenever possible, promote better transportation options than cars, connect grids together, put solar/wing/biogas/geothermal plants everywhere, find more efficient ways to ship cargo across the planet, etc.