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Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in ot

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce. - Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. These costs make it impractical for a city to invest in. They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) and absurd amounts of space. - Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. In a national defense situation, nuclear power plants are large, easily identifiable, delicate targets that can take an entire area’s grid offline with a single hit to a cooling tower. The damage doesn’t even need to be severe, just enough to warrant a shutdown and inspection. Compared to other readily available green power sources, I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Maybe one day when humanity is a space faring race we could look to nuclear to support us then, but using nuclear on earth today is a bad decision. edit: A large number of replies seem to think I am pro-shutdown of plants or pro-coal, but that was never stated. My argument is against further investment into nuclear when there are other more known technologies available, like solar and wind.

DaedPsyker 5y ago
How many have been affected by emissions because we let perfect be the enemy of good? We don't go out with a bang with coal, no spectacular single point to focus attention. Nonetheless people are dying early right now this minute because it's easier to dismiss the actual long drawn out deaths than the theoretical ones.
kazinator 5y ago
If something is 99.9999999% safe, it's not going to have a catastrophic failure. It will have some rare minor failures, whose effects are mitigated by a cascade of multiple safeguards. > Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave Let's ignore how radioactive minerals are already found in caves. Just don't ventilate your above-ground cave, and you've got radon gas.
yodsanklai 5y ago
> Compared to other readily available green power sources 1. No power source is green. They all take a toll on the environment. 2. You can't compare nuclear to solar/wind, as solar/wind is intermittent. Currently, dismantling a nuclear power plant means replacing it by fossil fuel. See what is happening in Germany for instance.
rllearneratwork 5y ago
"Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with." This is false. It is easier and safer to store the waste from modern nuclear power plants than waste from production and used solar panels (which are conveniently outsourced to China now due to poor env regulations there)
- therealcamino 5y ago
  Do you have sources for that?
  - orwin 5y ago
    It took time to find a pro-solar source which touched upon the subject (other were Forbes and shady websites): https://news.energysage.com/solar-panels-toxic-environment/ https://news.energysage.com/solar-panels-toxic-environment/ Basically, what i've heard before (i only skimmed the source), all solar panel are toxic, because the production create use a lot of chemical and create byproducts. We ignore this, it mostly hit poor areas in China and Africa, and this pollution will disapear in less than a century. The end-of-life is OK for old-style PV. Most "new" type of solar panels however, especially those you put on your own roof, are extremely toxic at their end-of-life, and what's worse is that their toxicity are not due to a chemical compound but to elements. What's even worse is that those elements are heavy metals, so bury even one of those PV panels in the ground and it become cancer-land a few year after.
orangepurple 5y ago
If nuclear core meltdowns can be fully contained by design the risk is mitigated. For instance with newer designs of smaller portable reactors by NuScale
- ZetaZero 5y ago
  "That’s impossible, an RBMK reactor can’t explode."
- smotah 5y ago
  That's also utility of the "core catcher" component of some gen III reactor designs, that are specifically made to cool down corium in case of a core meltdown. For SMR, the risk is mitigated because the reactor isn't sufficiently powerful to melt itself.
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  It is easier to design perfect reactors and then it is to build perfect reactors.
Ericson2314 5y ago
"Maybe we will make a few km^2 a no human zone" and "let's torch the planet" are not comparable risks. Not remotely. > Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. So do subways, these days, for no good reason! Capitalism kinda sucks at things with upfront costs and little maintenance costs. Without operational costs in fuel, there can't be enough rent sneaking to make the investment self-funding, and without the ability to do things incrementally --- constant practice --- we can't lower costs the usual way. Fundamentally, Capitalism is bad at capital, and good at operational. Irony in the name. It's no secret that places like Korea are good at doing nuclear power and subways cheaply. It's the same skill. Unfortunately, to the extent it's exporters being good at it, they skill relates on our non-skill.
shakow 5y ago
> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a handful of Soviet and Japanese technician perished in accidents, don't get me wrong, but why such an irrational focus on nuclear accidents when a single dam break (and still, hydroelectric energy is among the safest of the safests) caused more casualties than nuclear energy in its whole life? > that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation That's just plain wrong. > and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. I, too, often randomly stumble on nuclear waste depots 400m deep under the surface. Such a way to waste my Sunday. > They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) While otherenergy sources are maid of fairy tears? > and absurd amounts of space. Ah yes, remind me how many windmills we would need to produce as much energey as a NPP?
- mcguire 5y ago
  Probably something to do with the nearly 2000 sq mi of "exclusion zones" from Chernobyl and Fukushima. (Which, admittedly, is great for the local wildlife.) "Ah yes, remind me how many windmills we would need to produce as much energey as a NPP? About 1500.
  - shakow 5y ago
    > About 1500. Nope. Average charge load for a windmill is ~35%, vs. over 90% for NPPs. Thus, you would need roughly thrice as many, and that in places with alternating winds – otherwise you would just get blackouts.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      Already factored in. I can't find my original reference, but here's once that doesn't factor in the difference: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-power-does-nuclear-reactor-produce https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-powe...
cogman10 5y ago
Of the things you've listed, I think the costs are really the only argument against nuclear. The inherit risks are supremely low and the catastrophic failure mode for nuclear plants isn't a nuclear winter, in the absolutely worst case it's a contamination of the area where the plant was built (Modern nukes are all about containing failures. So even while they've optimized for not failing, they've also optimized for what happens when failure happens). Nuclear waste isn't nearly as difficult to deal with as NIMBYs are. It's pretty easy to find enough room and locations to store nuclear waste, the harder part is convincing people that's a good place to store it. For example, a single abandoned mine could house decades worth of nuclear waste. Nuclear plants produce almost no waste and the waste they do produce is entirely self contained. Further, more modern breeder reactors produce even less waste and the waste they produce ends up having a low level or radioactivity at the end of it. For the national defense argument, Every single power generation method has an output line to tie to the grid. Why would you attack a cooling tower (which would take a bunch of heavy duty explosives) when cutting a few MW transmission lines would have the same effect and require bolt cutters? The only reason not to build new nuclear is because it's more expensive than the current crop of green tech and it will take longer to bring online. Existing nuclear should keep operating until the grid is decarbonized.
- lazide 5y ago
  Even crazier - attacking the power lines doesn’t even require bolt cutters. A ballon or toy drone and some aluminized string or thin wire is more than enough to have it blow itself up.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    The thin wire will melt appart before the power lines do.
    - cesarb 5y ago
      > The thin wire will melt apart before the power lines do. It's a bit more subtle than that. As far as I understand, the thin wire might melt, but its vaporized remnants would be enough to keep an arc going between the phases or a phase and the ground. Then the protection devices at both ends of the line would detect the short circuit, turn off the line, wait for a bit of time (enough for the vaporized remnants and ionized air to disperse), and turn the line on again automatically. Since most high-voltage power grids have redundant circuits, it's likely that no consumer would lose power even for a moment.
enriquto 5y ago
> a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We've already detonated hundreds of nuclear bombs. The effects are ecologically catastrophic, but negligible compared to the damage of fossil fuels. As long as there is a single coal plant in the world, or a city whose transportation is based on burning fossil fuels, worrying too much about nuclear plants is stupid (unless you live just next to one of them).
soperj 5y ago
>Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. Hydro power has greater risks.
jasamer 5y ago
> They also require ... absurd amounts of space. I'd have thought that nuclear requires the least amount of space of all energy sources.
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  Plants require dedicated space that cannot be used for anything else. Plants also require security barriers and other obstructions that take up more space. You could (potentially) put a full solar array, enough to power your house, on your roof right now, and not take up any additional space.
  - sliken 5y ago
    You could, but you'd need grid access for when the sun goes down, and the variability of sun and wind is one of the leading justifications for nuclear.
baud147258 5y ago
> They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) and absurd amounts of space. All the other types of power plants use massive amount of concrete too and space (except solar panel installed on roofs)
- p_j_w 5y ago
  Solar panels aren't all that great at EOL, either. They've got some toxic materials in them and aren't, as yet, easily recyclable. They beat the shit out of fossil fuels as far as the environment goes, but they're hardly without their own problems.
- smotah 5y ago
  Indeed, nuclear power plants requires way less concrete by kWh than wind turbines.
dehrmann 5y ago
> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. The risk is mostly that there's a large, high-profile accident every 20 years. Coal power has probably killed more regular people (not miners) than nuclear due to its emissions, but it's metered out slowly, so it's less scary. People are more afraid of flying than driving for the same reason.
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  I do not consider coal to be a modern source of fuel, it’s clearly a legacy source that we need to be rid of.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    Well too bad because closing nuclear reactors right now means reopening coal plants, as we've recently seen in Germany and France. We don't really have the luxury of having time when it comes to energy/electricity and nuclear objectively is the best stopgap measure until (if) we manage to master intermittent energy sources.
    - andrewxdiamond 5y ago
      I also never said anything about closing reactors. I recommend you try and understand the position somebody’s trying to take before you argue against them, lest you end up embarrassing yourself arguing the wrong points, like you are now. I added some clarity to my point above.
  - juanjmanfredi 5y ago
    For what it's worth, nuclear energy kills fewer people per kilowatt hour than any other energy source, including solar and wind. This is as of 2012. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/?sh=569b09e8709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
lm28469 5y ago
> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100% You're breathing coal and gas byproducts every single day, byproducts which are taking years of life expectancy, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone, but oh god "Chernobyl bad, let's close perfectly safe and working nuclear reactors". Germany is firing up coal plants because they're decomissining their nuclear reactors in favour of intermittent energy sources (Germany kwh price is 2x compared to France), we simply don't have time to do both at the same time > Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Intermittent energy sources produce a huge amount of waste and are a pain in the ass to recycle, not even talking about how to store that energy for later use. > Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. Sure, but if a country is bold enough to start attacking nuclear reactors you can be sure you're not too far from full scale war and at that point it'll just be a small detail in the vast amount of violence and destruction that will ensue. > Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. There is no magic bullet here, solar and wind are also a major pain in the ass to build and maintain. We have 8000 windmills in France, we'd need 55 000 running at 100% to produce enough energy for our current use > I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Because there is no such thing Intermittent energy sources only work if we stop using more and more energy, but since GDP = energy we're fucked [0]. We can't decommission both gas and nuclear at the same time and keep the same quality of life / growth expectations with solar and wind. [0] https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/what-is-energy-actually/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/wha...
- bildung 5y ago
  > Germany is firing up coal plants because they're decomissining their nuclear reactors in favour of intermittent energy sources No they aren't, they are decomissioning coal plants, too, and at a much faster rate than nuclear. From 2013 to 2020 nuclear as share of Germany's energy mix went from 17% to 13%. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en& https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&... During the same time, coal went from 45% to 23%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany > Germany kwh price is 2x compared to France The difference is taxes, not production costs. Have a look at price composition for Germany: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-households-pay-power https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-house...
pjscott 5y ago
> - Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. If you look at the list of reactors in the article, most of them took only 5-6 years to build. Between 1977 and 1987, a ten-year span of time, they added 45 GW of nuclear power to the grid. Do nuclear plants really take ages to build?
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  You can stand up incremental solar panels at a very small scale and go up from there. Solar also requires almost 0 regulatory red tape, something that adds years onto the planning stage of a plant You get no ROI from nuclear until the plant is active.
ashtonkem 5y ago
> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. Are we ignoring the hundred thousand people dying per year because of coal exhaust? Because it sure seems like that's what you're doing. 13,000 people die premature deaths per year because of coal power in the United States, more in countries with more coal and less stringent emissions controls. If we're evaluating "inherent risks", you really should include that in your calculus. Natural gas power production probably kills ~4,000 people per year, by the by. > Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce. So is fly ash. Hell, so is CO2. > Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. These costs make it impractical for a city to invest in. They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) and absurd amounts of space. Never see these arguments raised against coal or natural gas plants and production infrastructure. Also, it's not like governments don't waste crap tons of money all the time on dumb things. The F-35 is up to what, half a trillion dollars now? The Zumwalt class destroyer cost $7.5 billion each and we don't even have ammunition for its main gun. There is plenty of money around to make nuclear happen, we just decide to pour that money into useless shit rather than power. > Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. In a national defense situation, nuclear power plants are large, easily identifiable, delicate targets that can take an entire area’s grid offline with a single hit to a cooling tower. The damage doesn’t even need to be severe, just enough to warrant a shutdown and inspection. I was unaware that natural gas power plants can move. Oh wait. The power grid itself is a huge, vulnerable thing. The actual target for enemy actors isn't the power plant itself, which is usually hardened, but rather transformer stations that are usually soft targets. Hell, one got knocked out in CA recently by an unknown actor with a single rifle, no fancy nation state equipment needed. > Compared to other readily available green power sources, I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. The rub is that it is currently impossible to run our power grid on renewables. Night time is a thing, as are still days when the wind does not blow. Maybe in a few decades we'll have sufficient grid level storage in order to make this a moot discussion, but we're not there yet. Right now any grid running a significant portion of renewables still requires "peaker" plants to provide base level load when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. And I say that someone with rooftop solar. It's great, but I can't run my house on it at night.
nickik 5y ago
I think all of those are not really true when we are thinking about modern plants that you would build if you were really serious. If you really go into nuclear today you would try to use something like Terrestrial Energy Molten Salt reactor or something like that. - Nuclear kills less people, that is worth some tiny risk - Nuclear waste is actually a resource for the future. You can get things like nuclear batteries, medical isotopes and so on. Not to mention reusing the fuel in next generation reactors. - Nuclear plants take ages to build because they are big, next generation reactors are 10-20x smaller - Next generation Nuclear reactors are built underground and have a very strong defense on top. In war time you could reinforce that. That said, for most nation that matters, this is not a huge concern. > I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Because its reliable and produces energy even if a vulcano covers the sun and you have a few days without win. It gives you power when and where you need it, no need for a gigantic storage and transmission infrastructure. Maximum reuse of existing infrastructure. > Maybe one day when humanity is a space faring race we could look to nuclear to support us then, but using nuclear on earth today is a bad decision. That crazy. Just based on first principle nuclear is the best and most dense energy source. We can use it with 60s tech, and we could do much better today. Why would we only use it in some far future when the technology exists now.
- oezi 5y ago
  Nuclear at this point is dead in the water. The upward trajectory of renewables is so strong that building nuclear plants is no longer viable. If anybody would change course now and start planning and building new nuclear plants it will be at least 10 years before these go online. By this time wind and solar will be another magnitude cheaper and nuclear will not be able to compete.
  - nickik 5y ago
    So your logic is, only wind and solar can improve and nuclear can never improve.
    - oezi 5y ago
gilbetron 5y ago
> I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Night and northern climate.
malka 5y ago
> I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. I enjoy having clean electricity when it rains, during the night, or when there is no wind.
masklinn 5y ago
> - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We've already seen what the worst-case catastrophic failure of a bad plant design yields and it's… Not that bad frankly, especially from an ecological standpoint. > - Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce. The amount of nuclear waste is ridiculously small, the entirety of highly radioactive nuclear waste produced to date fits on a football field 3 stories tall. There are thousands of terrils bigger than that out there. As for "hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it", Oklo was pretty hard to find. > - Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. Nuclear plants are like anything else, if you get in the groove they can be built fast and for good prices. At the height of its construction, France completed plants in something like 5 years and had half a dozen going on at any one time. > They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) So do wind turbines? > and absurd amounts of space. Compared to what? Millions of square miles of solar panels? The Paluel Nuclear Plant is 1.6 sq km total, and has the same nameplate capacity as 35 sq km of solar panels. We're talking 35 square kilometers covered entirely in solar cells, once you add access and maintenance you're at 40 or 50. And that's before accounting for the dismal capacity factor of solar, which increase the surface 2 to 5 folds depending on the location. Or the variability and seasonal unreliability of solar panels. > - Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. In a national defense situation, nuclear power plants are large, easily identifiable, delicate targets that can take an entire area’s grid offline with a single hit to a cooling tower. You don't seem to realise renewable power plants have centralised collector stations you can hit all the same and take the entire thing offline. And unlike nukes, protection against this sort of events is not part of a substation's usual brief. > edit: A large number of replies seem to think I am pro-shutdown of plants or pro-coal, but that was never stated. My argument is against further investment into nuclear when there are other more known technologies available, like solar and wind. All of which have massive drawbacks, and are not incompatible with nuclear plants.
culi 5y ago
The obsession with solar panels is currently driving a major ecological catastrophe. Solar panels are known to leak lead in the environment. We also have no good way to recycle them once the cells are done for good (currently, the average lifespan of a panel is about 20 years). There is already a massive buildup of solar waste full of extremely toxic components and we're not even close to seeing the worst of it considering most solar panels today were installed in the past 2 decades. In addition to that, the amount of space it would take to have the equivalent amount of power that a modern nuclear plant would provide is a massive ecological disaster in and of itself. And I haven't even begun to talk about batteries... Solar is not the solution. To be honest nuclear isn't either. Coal is obviously terrible and wind is unreliable. The real solution that no one dares to talk about is degrowth. George Bush articulated it himself when he said, "“The American way of life is not up for negotiations." And to this day we would never dare to bring up the idea that we actually just need to USE LESS.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  I was with you until degrowth, kind of. But we could 1000x the number of nukes and not run into the power generation or waste problems. Now, with that much energy we would have far more of a growth problem far worse than today, but that's not really nuclear's "fault", that's more a downstream issue. I have a secret suspicion renewables are popular precisely because they have scaling issues. For the certain easy-to-dunk-on degrwoth fan who has more guilt than clear thinking, the idea of renewables as a sort of self-flagellation austerity is attractive. The problem is our society (or "Captialism"), even, pushes for growth because a feeling for austerity. Only with the feeling of abundance do we step off the gas. Things like UBI and nuclear, which they fear will lead to a spending spree and rampant new consumerism, should instead turn off the real and metaphorical cortisol that leads to these things in the first place. ------- The best stuff I've read about degrowth is from Nathan Tankus, who's got the necessity for needle-threading down, along with the skills to actually do the threading. I will try to find something that is not a tweat.
- robocat 5y ago
  > Solar panels are known to leak lead in the environment. I suspect you are grasping for excuses. Do modern panels have significant lead in them? Also there is a huge abundance of lead in our city environment already (paints, leaded petrol). Even if there is lead in panels, it is concentrated, and I suspect the total amounts in panels would be at least three orders of magnitude less than that. Back when we used alkyllead additives in petrol, it was about 0.5g lead per litre[1], which would be an astonishing amount of lead put into our direct environment. And those used panels will still have value to people (eg third world) and will get reused, giving excess value to poor countries. [1] https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=%22grams+lead+per+gallon%22 https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=%22grams+lead+per+gallon%2...
godelski 5y ago
> You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. I'm not sure how you wrote this and took it seriously. Should I never leave the house? How do I eat? Eating is more dangerous than that. We can't just live in a bubble. There is never perfect safety in anything you will do in life. You'll always have to make risk/reward trade offs. Historically nuclear shows the safest option. > Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce. You seem to be uninformed of how these work. If you care to learn more I suggest reading here[0]. I bet you're also overestimating how much waste there is. Let's look at the total waste of decades worth of France[1] and Russian[2] waste. That's the entire amount of waste since the nuclear programs started till now. France also recycles most of its waste which greatly reduces the rate of waste. Storage also doesn't have to be as long as you think. We tend to have a few orders of safety in nuclear safety. You're also not being fair in your comparisons. You're acting like strip mining and dredging for rare earth materials isn't doing crazy damage to our environment too. Pretending that these also don't pose a significant waste problem as well. Like the previous response, there is a waste tradeoff. Even the IPCC reports will demonstrate that the lifetime emissions and waste is low for nuclear. This is the part that frustrates me most about many of these discussions. People act like solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are perfectly clean and have no problems. Doing so just demonstrates naivety. I'm happy you're passionate. Good. We need passionate people to solve this problem. BUT we can't stay uneducated and expect to solve the most complex problem humans have ever faced in history. I repeat: the most complex problem in human history. I don't pretend to be an expert. No single person can know everything. But to act like it is simple is harmful. And just to clarify, "pro-nuclear" just means keeping it on the table as an option. It does not mean using only nuclear. Energy requires a diverse portfolio of tools. The more we limit ourselves the more challenging the problem is ahead. > Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. I actually agree with this argument. > Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. They also are very hard to attack, never have been, and there's a reason they haven't. It is just never worth it because reactors can shut down. They are designed to take multiple plane strikes. > Compared to other readily available green power sources, I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Read this[1]. You're vastly overestimating the risk. But that is unsurprising since humans are notoriously bad at it. > edit: A large number of replies seem to think I am pro-shutdown of plants or pro-coal, but that was never stated. My argument is against further investment into nuclear when there are other more known technologies available, like solar and wind. That's because that's what your comment implies, even if you don't realize it. Many people do not actually understand the complexities of climate change, how we got here, and how much further we have to go. Most people think green energy is simply a matter of political will. It's far from that. Physics Girl recently did a 4 part series on Hydrogen Fuel [4], Batteries and Fuelcells[5], Storage[6], and CSP[7]. Climate change isn't happening simply because we drive cars and our grid isn't green. Changing those only gets us half way there. And no, the other half isn't switching to a vegan diet, we're just talking about the energy sector. There's still major technical challenges that lie ahead, especially in mass storage. [0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/risk.html https://whatisnuclear.com/risk.html [2] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWAO3vUn7nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWAO3vUn7nw [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHmIVw9etns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHmIVw9etns [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccO0_hSXMyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccO0_hSXMyM
lkbm 5y ago
I agree with you that we should be pursuing wind and solar at this point, but this isn't because it's a better solution technologically. Nuclear is still slightly better, IMO. It's just politically a non-starter, mostly due to the incorrect way humans assess risk, and I think this is an example of that: > If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We've been using nuclear power for over sixty years, and the most catastrophic nuclear plant failure killed ~4,000 people[0]. Worst incident in the US was Three-Mile Island with 0 deaths. Coal has been killing many more than that in the US alone annually for decades, though we may finally be below that count[1]. Of course, this is before considering the effects of climate change. It's akin to how air crashes get our attention, while we ignore the car accidents that kill 1000 as many people. Air pollution deaths are even less visible. At this point, wind and solar are still slightly behind nuclear as a technologically-viable solution (in my amateur view), but because they can still iterate, I think they'll probably surpass it soon. That said, a lot of us are still bitter that we could have converted to a clean, carbon-neutral grid in the 1970s (Nixon proposed doing this!) and the politics of bad risk analysis (and incumbent coal interests) killed it. Solar+wind have the benefit of political support/momentum. I think their biggest political challenge is in building out high-voltage transmission lines across land owned by hundreds of different entities (and that that keep burning down California because maintaining them properly is expensive). So yeah, I'm for us going all-in on them. However, them saving is is a fantasy, and if we're in fantasy land, why not entertain the fantasy of us using nuclear instead? :-) (Or better yet, why not both?) [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-kno... [1] https://www.catf.us/work/power-plants/coal-pollution/ https://www.catf.us/work/power-plants/coal-pollution/
derriz 5y ago
There are a large number of people who believe nuclear is a victim of a conspiracy instead of just looking at how economics of electricity production has evolved. Nuclear has been in a steady decline globally since the late 1980s. At one point - during the oil-crisis 70s nuclear was the cheapest but coal overtook it in the late 80s/90s - being cheaper and more flexible/dispatchable and easier to build. By 2000-2010, natural gas displaced coal and now - in the last few years or so - solar PV and wind represent over 80% of the additional electricity generation capacity added globally.
himinlomax 5y ago
> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation Aviation has inherent risk that are managed more than adequately, making it the safest mode of transportation around. Similarly, nuclear power has inherent risks that are managed more than adequately, as evidenced by the fact that the only major accident in the last 30 years, Fukushima, caused one (1) victim.

DaedPsyker 5y ago

How many have been affected by emissions because we let perfect be the enemy of good? We don't go out with a bang with coal, no spectacular single point to focus attention. Nonetheless people are dying early right now this minute because it's easier to dismiss the actual long drawn out deaths than the theoretical ones.

kazinator 5y ago

If something is 99.9999999% safe, it's not going to have a catastrophic failure. It will have some rare minor failures, whose effects are mitigated by a cascade of multiple safeguards. > Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave Let's ignore how radioactive minerals are already found in caves. Just don't ventilate your above-ground cave, and you've got radon gas.

yodsanklai 5y ago

> Compared to other readily available green power sources 1. No power source is green. They all take a toll on the environment. 2. You can't compare nuclear to solar/wind, as solar/wind is intermittent. Currently, dismantling a nuclear power plant means replacing it by fossil fuel. See what is happening in Germany for instance.

rllearneratwork 5y ago

"Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with." This is false. It is easier and safer to store the waste from modern nuclear power plants than waste from production and used solar panels (which are conveniently outsourced to China now due to poor env regulations there)

therealcamino 5y ago
Do you have sources for that?
- orwin 5y ago
  It took time to find a pro-solar source which touched upon the subject (other were Forbes and shady websites): https://news.energysage.com/solar-panels-toxic-environment/ https://news.energysage.com/solar-panels-toxic-environment/ Basically, what i've heard before (i only skimmed the source), all solar panel are toxic, because the production create use a lot of chemical and create byproducts. We ignore this, it mostly hit poor areas in China and Africa, and this pollution will disapear in less than a century. The end-of-life is OK for old-style PV. Most "new" type of solar panels however, especially those you put on your own roof, are extremely toxic at their end-of-life, and what's worse is that their toxicity are not due to a chemical compound but to elements. What's even worse is that those elements are heavy metals, so bury even one of those PV panels in the ground and it become cancer-land a few year after.

orangepurple 5y ago

If nuclear core meltdowns can be fully contained by design the risk is mitigated. For instance with newer designs of smaller portable reactors by NuScale

ZetaZero 5y ago
"That’s impossible, an RBMK reactor can’t explode."
smotah 5y ago
That's also utility of the "core catcher" component of some gen III reactor designs, that are specifically made to cool down corium in case of a core meltdown. For SMR, the risk is mitigated because the reactor isn't sufficiently powerful to melt itself.
andrewxdiamond 5y ago
It is easier to design perfect reactors and then it is to build perfect reactors.

Ericson2314 5y ago

"Maybe we will make a few km^2 a no human zone" and "let's torch the planet" are not comparable risks. Not remotely. > Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. So do subways, these days, for no good reason! Capitalism kinda sucks at things with upfront costs and little maintenance costs. Without operational costs in fuel, there can't be enough rent sneaking to make the investment self-funding, and without the ability to do things incrementally --- constant practice --- we can't lower costs the usual way. Fundamentally, Capitalism is bad at capital, and good at operational. Irony in the name. It's no secret that places like Korea are good at doing nuclear power and subways cheaply. It's the same skill. Unfortunately, to the extent it's exporters being good at it, they skill relates on our non-skill.

shakow 5y ago

> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a handful of Soviet and Japanese technician perished in accidents, don't get me wrong, but why such an irrational focus on nuclear accidents when a single dam break (and still, hydroelectric energy is among the safest of the safests) caused more casualties than nuclear energy in its whole life? > that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation That's just plain wrong. > and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. I, too, often randomly stumble on nuclear waste depots 400m deep under the surface. Such a way to waste my Sunday. > They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) While otherenergy sources are maid of fairy tears? > and absurd amounts of space. Ah yes, remind me how many windmills we would need to produce as much energey as a NPP?

mcguire 5y ago
Probably something to do with the nearly 2000 sq mi of "exclusion zones" from Chernobyl and Fukushima. (Which, admittedly, is great for the local wildlife.) "Ah yes, remind me how many windmills we would need to produce as much energey as a NPP? About 1500.
- shakow 5y ago
  > About 1500. Nope. Average charge load for a windmill is ~35%, vs. over 90% for NPPs. Thus, you would need roughly thrice as many, and that in places with alternating winds – otherwise you would just get blackouts.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Already factored in. I can't find my original reference, but here's once that doesn't factor in the difference: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-power-does-nuclear-reactor-produce https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-powe...

cogman10 5y ago

Of the things you've listed, I think the costs are really the only argument against nuclear. The inherit risks are supremely low and the catastrophic failure mode for nuclear plants isn't a nuclear winter, in the absolutely worst case it's a contamination of the area where the plant was built (Modern nukes are all about containing failures. So even while they've optimized for not failing, they've also optimized for what happens when failure happens). Nuclear waste isn't nearly as difficult to deal with as NIMBYs are. It's pretty easy to find enough room and locations to store nuclear waste, the harder part is convincing people that's a good place to store it. For example, a single abandoned mine could house decades worth of nuclear waste. Nuclear plants produce almost no waste and the waste they do produce is entirely self contained. Further, more modern breeder reactors produce even less waste and the waste they produce ends up having a low level or radioactivity at the end of it. For the national defense argument, Every single power generation method has an output line to tie to the grid. Why would you attack a cooling tower (which would take a bunch of heavy duty explosives) when cutting a few MW transmission lines would have the same effect and require bolt cutters? The only reason not to build new nuclear is because it's more expensive than the current crop of green tech and it will take longer to bring online. Existing nuclear should keep operating until the grid is decarbonized.

lazide 5y ago
Even crazier - attacking the power lines doesn’t even require bolt cutters. A ballon or toy drone and some aluminized string or thin wire is more than enough to have it blow itself up.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  The thin wire will melt appart before the power lines do.
  - cesarb 5y ago
    > The thin wire will melt apart before the power lines do. It's a bit more subtle than that. As far as I understand, the thin wire might melt, but its vaporized remnants would be enough to keep an arc going between the phases or a phase and the ground. Then the protection devices at both ends of the line would detect the short circuit, turn off the line, wait for a bit of time (enough for the vaporized remnants and ionized air to disperse), and turn the line on again automatically. Since most high-voltage power grids have redundant circuits, it's likely that no consumer would lose power even for a moment.

enriquto 5y ago

> a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We've already detonated hundreds of nuclear bombs. The effects are ecologically catastrophic, but negligible compared to the damage of fossil fuels. As long as there is a single coal plant in the world, or a city whose transportation is based on burning fossil fuels, worrying too much about nuclear plants is stupid (unless you live just next to one of them).

soperj 5y ago

>Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. Hydro power has greater risks.

jasamer 5y ago

> They also require ... absurd amounts of space. I'd have thought that nuclear requires the least amount of space of all energy sources.

andrewxdiamond 5y ago
Plants require dedicated space that cannot be used for anything else. Plants also require security barriers and other obstructions that take up more space. You could (potentially) put a full solar array, enough to power your house, on your roof right now, and not take up any additional space.
- sliken 5y ago
  You could, but you'd need grid access for when the sun goes down, and the variability of sun and wind is one of the leading justifications for nuclear.

baud147258 5y ago

> They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) and absurd amounts of space. All the other types of power plants use massive amount of concrete too and space (except solar panel installed on roofs)

p_j_w 5y ago
Solar panels aren't all that great at EOL, either. They've got some toxic materials in them and aren't, as yet, easily recyclable. They beat the shit out of fossil fuels as far as the environment goes, but they're hardly without their own problems.
smotah 5y ago
Indeed, nuclear power plants requires way less concrete by kWh than wind turbines.

dehrmann 5y ago

> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. The risk is mostly that there's a large, high-profile accident every 20 years. Coal power has probably killed more regular people (not miners) than nuclear due to its emissions, but it's metered out slowly, so it's less scary. People are more afraid of flying than driving for the same reason.

andrewxdiamond 5y ago
I do not consider coal to be a modern source of fuel, it’s clearly a legacy source that we need to be rid of.
- lm28469 5y ago
  Well too bad because closing nuclear reactors right now means reopening coal plants, as we've recently seen in Germany and France. We don't really have the luxury of having time when it comes to energy/electricity and nuclear objectively is the best stopgap measure until (if) we manage to master intermittent energy sources.
  - andrewxdiamond 5y ago
    I also never said anything about closing reactors. I recommend you try and understand the position somebody’s trying to take before you argue against them, lest you end up embarrassing yourself arguing the wrong points, like you are now. I added some clarity to my point above.
- juanjmanfredi 5y ago
  For what it's worth, nuclear energy kills fewer people per kilowatt hour than any other energy source, including solar and wind. This is as of 2012. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/?sh=569b09e8709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

lm28469 5y ago

> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100% You're breathing coal and gas byproducts every single day, byproducts which are taking years of life expectancy, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone, but oh god "Chernobyl bad, let's close perfectly safe and working nuclear reactors". Germany is firing up coal plants because they're decomissining their nuclear reactors in favour of intermittent energy sources (Germany kwh price is 2x compared to France), we simply don't have time to do both at the same time > Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Intermittent energy sources produce a huge amount of waste and are a pain in the ass to recycle, not even talking about how to store that energy for later use. > Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. Sure, but if a country is bold enough to start attacking nuclear reactors you can be sure you're not too far from full scale war and at that point it'll just be a small detail in the vast amount of violence and destruction that will ensue. > Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. There is no magic bullet here, solar and wind are also a major pain in the ass to build and maintain. We have 8000 windmills in France, we'd need 55 000 running at 100% to produce enough energy for our current use > I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Because there is no such thing Intermittent energy sources only work if we stop using more and more energy, but since GDP = energy we're fucked [0]. We can't decommission both gas and nuclear at the same time and keep the same quality of life / growth expectations with solar and wind. [0] https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/what-is-energy-actually/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/wha...

bildung 5y ago
> Germany is firing up coal plants because they're decomissining their nuclear reactors in favour of intermittent energy sources No they aren't, they are decomissioning coal plants, too, and at a much faster rate than nuclear. From 2013 to 2020 nuclear as share of Germany's energy mix went from 17% to 13%. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en& https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&... During the same time, coal went from 45% to 23%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany > Germany kwh price is 2x compared to France The difference is taxes, not production costs. Have a look at price composition for Germany: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-households-pay-power https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-house...

pjscott 5y ago

> - Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. If you look at the list of reactors in the article, most of them took only 5-6 years to build. Between 1977 and 1987, a ten-year span of time, they added 45 GW of nuclear power to the grid. Do nuclear plants really take ages to build?

andrewxdiamond 5y ago
You can stand up incremental solar panels at a very small scale and go up from there. Solar also requires almost 0 regulatory red tape, something that adds years onto the planning stage of a plant You get no ROI from nuclear until the plant is active.

ashtonkem 5y ago

> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. Are we ignoring the hundred thousand people dying per year because of coal exhaust? Because it sure seems like that's what you're doing. 13,000 people die premature deaths per year because of coal power in the United States, more in countries with more coal and less stringent emissions controls. If we're evaluating "inherent risks", you really should include that in your calculus. Natural gas power production probably kills ~4,000 people per year, by the by. > Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce. So is fly ash. Hell, so is CO2. > Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. These costs make it impractical for a city to invest in. They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) and absurd amounts of space. Never see these arguments raised against coal or natural gas plants and production infrastructure. Also, it's not like governments don't waste crap tons of money all the time on dumb things. The F-35 is up to what, half a trillion dollars now? The Zumwalt class destroyer cost $7.5 billion each and we don't even have ammunition for its main gun. There is plenty of money around to make nuclear happen, we just decide to pour that money into useless shit rather than power. > Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. In a national defense situation, nuclear power plants are large, easily identifiable, delicate targets that can take an entire area’s grid offline with a single hit to a cooling tower. The damage doesn’t even need to be severe, just enough to warrant a shutdown and inspection. I was unaware that natural gas power plants can move. Oh wait. The power grid itself is a huge, vulnerable thing. The actual target for enemy actors isn't the power plant itself, which is usually hardened, but rather transformer stations that are usually soft targets. Hell, one got knocked out in CA recently by an unknown actor with a single rifle, no fancy nation state equipment needed. > Compared to other readily available green power sources, I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. The rub is that it is currently impossible to run our power grid on renewables. Night time is a thing, as are still days when the wind does not blow. Maybe in a few decades we'll have sufficient grid level storage in order to make this a moot discussion, but we're not there yet. Right now any grid running a significant portion of renewables still requires "peaker" plants to provide base level load when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. And I say that someone with rooftop solar. It's great, but I can't run my house on it at night.

nickik 5y ago

I think all of those are not really true when we are thinking about modern plants that you would build if you were really serious. If you really go into nuclear today you would try to use something like Terrestrial Energy Molten Salt reactor or something like that. - Nuclear kills less people, that is worth some tiny risk - Nuclear waste is actually a resource for the future. You can get things like nuclear batteries, medical isotopes and so on. Not to mention reusing the fuel in next generation reactors. - Nuclear plants take ages to build because they are big, next generation reactors are 10-20x smaller - Next generation Nuclear reactors are built underground and have a very strong defense on top. In war time you could reinforce that. That said, for most nation that matters, this is not a huge concern. > I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Because its reliable and produces energy even if a vulcano covers the sun and you have a few days without win. It gives you power when and where you need it, no need for a gigantic storage and transmission infrastructure. Maximum reuse of existing infrastructure. > Maybe one day when humanity is a space faring race we could look to nuclear to support us then, but using nuclear on earth today is a bad decision. That crazy. Just based on first principle nuclear is the best and most dense energy source. We can use it with 60s tech, and we could do much better today. Why would we only use it in some far future when the technology exists now.

oezi 5y ago
Nuclear at this point is dead in the water. The upward trajectory of renewables is so strong that building nuclear plants is no longer viable. If anybody would change course now and start planning and building new nuclear plants it will be at least 10 years before these go online. By this time wind and solar will be another magnitude cheaper and nuclear will not be able to compete.
- nickik 5y ago
  So your logic is, only wind and solar can improve and nuclear can never improve.
  - oezi 5y ago

gilbetron 5y ago

> I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Night and northern climate.

malka 5y ago

> I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. I enjoy having clean electricity when it rains, during the night, or when there is no wind.

masklinn 5y ago

> - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We've already seen what the worst-case catastrophic failure of a bad plant design yields and it's… Not that bad frankly, especially from an ecological standpoint. > - Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce. The amount of nuclear waste is ridiculously small, the entirety of highly radioactive nuclear waste produced to date fits on a football field 3 stories tall. There are thousands of terrils bigger than that out there. As for "hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it", Oklo was pretty hard to find. > - Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. Nuclear plants are like anything else, if you get in the groove they can be built fast and for good prices. At the height of its construction, France completed plants in something like 5 years and had half a dozen going on at any one time. > They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) So do wind turbines? > and absurd amounts of space. Compared to what? Millions of square miles of solar panels? The Paluel Nuclear Plant is 1.6 sq km total, and has the same nameplate capacity as 35 sq km of solar panels. We're talking 35 square kilometers covered entirely in solar cells, once you add access and maintenance you're at 40 or 50. And that's before accounting for the dismal capacity factor of solar, which increase the surface 2 to 5 folds depending on the location. Or the variability and seasonal unreliability of solar panels. > - Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. In a national defense situation, nuclear power plants are large, easily identifiable, delicate targets that can take an entire area’s grid offline with a single hit to a cooling tower. You don't seem to realise renewable power plants have centralised collector stations you can hit all the same and take the entire thing offline. And unlike nukes, protection against this sort of events is not part of a substation's usual brief. > edit: A large number of replies seem to think I am pro-shutdown of plants or pro-coal, but that was never stated. My argument is against further investment into nuclear when there are other more known technologies available, like solar and wind. All of which have massive drawbacks, and are not incompatible with nuclear plants.

culi 5y ago

The obsession with solar panels is currently driving a major ecological catastrophe. Solar panels are known to leak lead in the environment. We also have no good way to recycle them once the cells are done for good (currently, the average lifespan of a panel is about 20 years). There is already a massive buildup of solar waste full of extremely toxic components and we're not even close to seeing the worst of it considering most solar panels today were installed in the past 2 decades. In addition to that, the amount of space it would take to have the equivalent amount of power that a modern nuclear plant would provide is a massive ecological disaster in and of itself. And I haven't even begun to talk about batteries... Solar is not the solution. To be honest nuclear isn't either. Coal is obviously terrible and wind is unreliable. The real solution that no one dares to talk about is degrowth. George Bush articulated it himself when he said, "“The American way of life is not up for negotiations." And to this day we would never dare to bring up the idea that we actually just need to USE LESS.

Ericson2314 5y ago
I was with you until degrowth, kind of. But we could 1000x the number of nukes and not run into the power generation or waste problems. Now, with that much energy we would have far more of a growth problem far worse than today, but that's not really nuclear's "fault", that's more a downstream issue. I have a secret suspicion renewables are popular precisely because they have scaling issues. For the certain easy-to-dunk-on degrwoth fan who has more guilt than clear thinking, the idea of renewables as a sort of self-flagellation austerity is attractive. The problem is our society (or "Captialism"), even, pushes for growth because a feeling for austerity. Only with the feeling of abundance do we step off the gas. Things like UBI and nuclear, which they fear will lead to a spending spree and rampant new consumerism, should instead turn off the real and metaphorical cortisol that leads to these things in the first place. ------- The best stuff I've read about degrowth is from Nathan Tankus, who's got the necessity for needle-threading down, along with the skills to actually do the threading. I will try to find something that is not a tweat.
robocat 5y ago
> Solar panels are known to leak lead in the environment. I suspect you are grasping for excuses. Do modern panels have significant lead in them? Also there is a huge abundance of lead in our city environment already (paints, leaded petrol). Even if there is lead in panels, it is concentrated, and I suspect the total amounts in panels would be at least three orders of magnitude less than that. Back when we used alkyllead additives in petrol, it was about 0.5g lead per litre[1], which would be an astonishing amount of lead put into our direct environment. And those used panels will still have value to people (eg third world) and will get reused, giving excess value to poor countries. [1] https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=%22grams+lead+per+gallon%22 https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=%22grams+lead+per+gallon%2...

godelski 5y ago

> You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. I'm not sure how you wrote this and took it seriously. Should I never leave the house? How do I eat? Eating is more dangerous than that. We can't just live in a bubble. There is never perfect safety in anything you will do in life. You'll always have to make risk/reward trade offs. Historically nuclear shows the safest option. > Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce. You seem to be uninformed of how these work. If you care to learn more I suggest reading here[0]. I bet you're also overestimating how much waste there is. Let's look at the total waste of decades worth of France[1] and Russian[2] waste. That's the entire amount of waste since the nuclear programs started till now. France also recycles most of its waste which greatly reduces the rate of waste. Storage also doesn't have to be as long as you think. We tend to have a few orders of safety in nuclear safety. You're also not being fair in your comparisons. You're acting like strip mining and dredging for rare earth materials isn't doing crazy damage to our environment too. Pretending that these also don't pose a significant waste problem as well. Like the previous response, there is a waste tradeoff. Even the IPCC reports will demonstrate that the lifetime emissions and waste is low for nuclear. This is the part that frustrates me most about many of these discussions. People act like solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are perfectly clean and have no problems. Doing so just demonstrates naivety. I'm happy you're passionate. Good. We need passionate people to solve this problem. BUT we can't stay uneducated and expect to solve the most complex problem humans have ever faced in history. I repeat: the most complex problem in human history. I don't pretend to be an expert. No single person can know everything. But to act like it is simple is harmful. And just to clarify, "pro-nuclear" just means keeping it on the table as an option. It does not mean using only nuclear. Energy requires a diverse portfolio of tools. The more we limit ourselves the more challenging the problem is ahead. > Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. I actually agree with this argument. > Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. They also are very hard to attack, never have been, and there's a reason they haven't. It is just never worth it because reactors can shut down. They are designed to take multiple plane strikes. > Compared to other readily available green power sources, I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels. Read this[1]. You're vastly overestimating the risk. But that is unsurprising since humans are notoriously bad at it. > edit: A large number of replies seem to think I am pro-shutdown of plants or pro-coal, but that was never stated. My argument is against further investment into nuclear when there are other more known technologies available, like solar and wind. That's because that's what your comment implies, even if you don't realize it. Many people do not actually understand the complexities of climate change, how we got here, and how much further we have to go. Most people think green energy is simply a matter of political will. It's far from that. Physics Girl recently did a 4 part series on Hydrogen Fuel [4], Batteries and Fuelcells[5], Storage[6], and CSP[7]. Climate change isn't happening simply because we drive cars and our grid isn't green. Changing those only gets us half way there. And no, the other half isn't switching to a vegan diet, we're just talking about the energy sector. There's still major technical challenges that lie ahead, especially in mass storage. [0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/risk.html https://whatisnuclear.com/risk.html [2] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWAO3vUn7nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWAO3vUn7nw [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHmIVw9etns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHmIVw9etns [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccO0_hSXMyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccO0_hSXMyM

lkbm 5y ago

I agree with you that we should be pursuing wind and solar at this point, but this isn't because it's a better solution technologically. Nuclear is still slightly better, IMO. It's just politically a non-starter, mostly due to the incorrect way humans assess risk, and I think this is an example of that: > If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We've been using nuclear power for over sixty years, and the most catastrophic nuclear plant failure killed ~4,000 people[0]. Worst incident in the US was Three-Mile Island with 0 deaths. Coal has been killing many more than that in the US alone annually for decades, though we may finally be below that count[1]. Of course, this is before considering the effects of climate change. It's akin to how air crashes get our attention, while we ignore the car accidents that kill 1000 as many people. Air pollution deaths are even less visible. At this point, wind and solar are still slightly behind nuclear as a technologically-viable solution (in my amateur view), but because they can still iterate, I think they'll probably surpass it soon. That said, a lot of us are still bitter that we could have converted to a clean, carbon-neutral grid in the 1970s (Nixon proposed doing this!) and the politics of bad risk analysis (and incumbent coal interests) killed it. Solar+wind have the benefit of political support/momentum. I think their biggest political challenge is in building out high-voltage transmission lines across land owned by hundreds of different entities (and that that keep burning down California because maintaining them properly is expensive). So yeah, I'm for us going all-in on them. However, them saving is is a fantasy, and if we're in fantasy land, why not entertain the fantasy of us using nuclear instead? :-) (Or better yet, why not both?) [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-kno... [1] https://www.catf.us/work/power-plants/coal-pollution/ https://www.catf.us/work/power-plants/coal-pollution/

derriz 5y ago

There are a large number of people who believe nuclear is a victim of a conspiracy instead of just looking at how economics of electricity production has evolved. Nuclear has been in a steady decline globally since the late 1980s. At one point - during the oil-crisis 70s nuclear was the cheapest but coal overtook it in the late 80s/90s - being cheaper and more flexible/dispatchable and easier to build. By 2000-2010, natural gas displaced coal and now - in the last few years or so - solar PV and wind represent over 80% of the additional electricity generation capacity added globally.

himinlomax 5y ago

> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation Aviation has inherent risk that are managed more than adequately, making it the safest mode of transportation around. Similarly, nuclear power has inherent risks that are managed more than adequately, as evidenced by the fact that the only major accident in the last 30 years, Fukushima, caused one (1) victim.