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Actually, it is not so clear nuclear is the solution in Europe (e.g. France) at this point. You still have to mine lots of uranium ore, because compared to coal

Actually, it is not so clear nuclear is the solution in Europe (e.g. France) at this point. You still have to mine lots of uranium ore, because compared to coal, you actually only seek a small fraction of it, where with coal you can burn almost all of what you mine. The enrichment facilities have dual use for war and the uranium mostly comes from Russia which is geopolitically problematic (for Europe, somewhat similar to coal/ oil/ gas mostly). With nuclear fission, we basically don't recycle much if at all. You have to take care of the waste. With coal of course, you have ash and all the CO_2 you have to do something about (again in Europe at least) if you don't want to pay too much on emission allowances. The last point, we just don't know how to build nuclear economically anymore. The process is so bureaucratic and slow it becomes infeasible to finance without major interventions. Letting Chinese or Russian companies build it from the standpoint of Europe is a geopolitical challenge and a security risk. All this time and money would be perhaps spent better elsewhere. In Europe, we are not able to build a nuclear powerplant in 15 years, so that is lots of time for research and development and even building something useable. It is very likely, most of the renewable sources will become more economical and nuclear less even less. We might devise a scheme to store energy by e.g. splitting salt (NaOH) into sodium metal, hydrogen and oxygen and later combining sodium with water to NaOH again, while getting hydrogen as a byproduct and lots of electrical current. It is a simple process, we "just" have to scale it and develop it further. The first half of it is well known for 100 years and was used at industrial scale. Currently, we just split NaCl directly to obtain sodium... The second half is described in patents by Lockheed-Martin that are long expired. You can read more in this diagram: https://www.orgpad.com/s/iV3vbi https://www.orgpad.com/s/iV3vbi Btw. Slowakia has a lot of nuclear too and here in Czechia, we have a conversation about building new reactors in Dukovany too. For Czechia, the approach seems to be misguided as you can read here (Google Translated from Czech): https://denikreferendum-cz.translate.goog/clanek/32812-cesky-energeticky-titanik-hlasi-plnou-parou-vpred?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=cs&_x_tr_pto=nui https://denikreferendum-cz.translate.goog/clanek/32812-cesky...

mFixman 5y ago
My biggest argument against nuclear is that there are no incentives for decommissioning unsafe plants in the far future. The usual pro-nuclear argument says that nuclear plants are only unsafe if managed incorrectly. However, the West doesn't have the political or economic framework to ensure they will get managed correctly: if you are the leader of the executive of some country, are you going to decomission a plant built 30 years ago that gives the country a lot gW of energy and raise energy prices for everyone, or are you going to risk the very low chance of a serious accident to keep prices down and pass the ball to whomever governs next? If nuclear is the future, we need an effective process of automatic decommissioning that can bypass governments. That process doesn't exist yet.
m4rtink 5y ago
Um, what ? There is not really any meaningful voices against building a new reactor block in Dukovany. Rather, there was a debate about making sure non-friendly foreign blocks are excluded from the tender to avoid the power plant being used as bargaining chip in future diplomatic games involving the Czech Republic.
- kaliszad 5y ago
  As outlined in the linked article quite in depth, it is economically infeasible and Czechia and the consumer have nothing to gain by it even compared to alternatives that also have their fair share of problems. If it was such a great idea/ investment, ČEZ wouldn't need any guarantees but it really isn't. I don't know how you evaluate, what voices are meaningful or not. Have you spent at least months researching the topic from multiple angles?
grandinj 5y ago
You don't need __lots__ of uranium. The cost of uranium for running a nuclear reactor is a rounding error in their overall costs.

mFixman 5y ago

My biggest argument against nuclear is that there are no incentives for decommissioning unsafe plants in the far future. The usual pro-nuclear argument says that nuclear plants are only unsafe if managed incorrectly. However, the West doesn't have the political or economic framework to ensure they will get managed correctly: if you are the leader of the executive of some country, are you going to decomission a plant built 30 years ago that gives the country a lot gW of energy and raise energy prices for everyone, or are you going to risk the very low chance of a serious accident to keep prices down and pass the ball to whomever governs next? If nuclear is the future, we need an effective process of automatic decommissioning that can bypass governments. That process doesn't exist yet.

m4rtink 5y ago

Um, what ? There is not really any meaningful voices against building a new reactor block in Dukovany. Rather, there was a debate about making sure non-friendly foreign blocks are excluded from the tender to avoid the power plant being used as bargaining chip in future diplomatic games involving the Czech Republic.

kaliszad 5y ago
As outlined in the linked article quite in depth, it is economically infeasible and Czechia and the consumer have nothing to gain by it even compared to alternatives that also have their fair share of problems. If it was such a great idea/ investment, ČEZ wouldn't need any guarantees but it really isn't. I don't know how you evaluate, what voices are meaningful or not. Have you spent at least months researching the topic from multiple angles?

grandinj 5y ago

You don't need __lots__ of uranium. The cost of uranium for running a nuclear reactor is a rounding error in their overall costs.